


Pleasant Hope

by ac1d6urn (Acid), Sinick



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Atheism, Atheist Character, Christianity, M/M, Magic, Religion, United States
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-06
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-25 18:40:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/956416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acid/pseuds/ac1d6urn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinick/pseuds/Sinick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snarry AU: In Pleasant Hope, Missouri, Pastor Severus Snape survives from day to day, until a restless youth called Harry teaches him that life is worth living.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Genesis

_"Don’t judge a book by its cover. Judge it by the harmful messages it contains."_

_-Welcome to Night Vale_

* * *

The roads in central Missouri are as long and uneventful as a lonely life. The rise and fall of loose wire dangling between telephone poles is as endless as the waves. If you stare too long, let that sagging wire mesmerize you into blinking, it can make you overlook the town altogether. But if you glance back quick enough, you might still spot the water tower, sticking up out of the straw-yellow fields. Quick, right there! Or you'll miss the only break in the flatness for hours.

Not that there's much else to miss out on, in the town called Pleasant Hope. Just a handful of houses corralled along a stretch of perfectly ordinary, solitary street. One teeth-rattling pothole later, and the town's gone, sinking into a sea of corn and soybean bisected by an occasional country road, narrow and dusty. At the turn of one such road, past the small cemetery, sits a wooden church with a white painted steeple.

Pastor Snape lives here, in his small shed-sized dwelling out back. Year after year, he tolerates the screeching gaggle of Sunday school brats who are far more teeth-grindingly loud now than they ever were during their baptisms. He puts his back into shoveling the snow off the driveway on winter mornings before funeral services. He sweeps the aisles free of rice after a rare spring wedding, scrubs grease from the plates after church dinners, and leads prayers and processions, all with measured grace and somberness and sobriety.

As jobs go, it's not too trying: just enough for one man, to keep the scant, three-digits-and-dwindling population from sinking too far into idleness or TV-induced stupor on a Sunday. One man's all a town this small needs, to tell them to keep their gazes firmly planted on the ground at their feet, and to remind them not to send their thoughts wandering too far, searching blearily, miserably past the heavens. (If there's one lesson Pastor Snape has learned, it's that pondering the theological mysteries of the world too closely can only lead into trouble.)

One might say the Pastor is a sensible man of the cloth, if not a particularly pleasant or hopeful one.

On Mondays - when all the psalm books are tucked away in the narrow shelves behind each pew, and the pews themselves are empty of even the most dedicated stragglers; when the stained glass window spills low, slanting rays from the setting sun - Pastor Snape takes one last look around the church and locks up. He walks back to his cottage alone, and settles down to a late evening between himself and the Lord, though He's never been keen on joining in so far. So Pastor Snape sits alone in his tiny kitchen and treats himself to a nip of something far stronger than sacramental wine.

He lets his drink warm its way down his throat, and he breathes in the stillness. All is quiet. All is well.

In the evening hush, unbroken by any tell-tale crunch of driveway gravel under car tires, the sudden rattle of the locked doorknob is as startling as a tornado warning past the end of the season. Pastor Snape jolts, shoves greasy hair out of his eyes, and heads for the door. The Lord's work is, apparently, never done. But Snape's well used to thankless tasks by now: someone has to be.

He unlocks and opens the door and pauses in the doorway, sweeping the yard with an unimpressed glare which comes to rest on the figure sitting on the porch stairs, head-down and huddled into the gloom.

"Hello," Snape says quietly, lifting his fingertip from the porch light switch. He doesn't turn the light on or approach any closer. It wouldn't do to frighten away a late visitor, or to let them catch the scent of whiskey on him.

Suddenly remembering proper manners, the visitor yanks his baseball cap off his head, releasing a fluffy dark mop of hair falling just past his ears. "Um, hi! I, er... I thought churches are always open."

"You can come back on Wednesday or on Sunday for services. Eight AM and six PM. Sharp." As far as Pastor Snape is concerned, there are four types of people in this world that usually find their way into his parish: scholars, sowers, survivors...

Seekers.

It's painfully clear which type the boy belongs to: fearless, thoughtless and troublesome.

The visitor's head lifts. Wide green eyes flash behind round glasses, and his throat moves as he swallows. "How do you know God even exists?"

 _Seekers always think they're unique. This one is pure stubbornness and sass,_ Snape thinks, _self-absorbed enough not to bother looking at the hours posted on the church door._

Snape takes a deep breath and rids himself of the irritation that's tightened his chest, exhaling it in a slow, outwardly serene sigh. Far better that, than giving in to his first impulse and snapping 'I don't _know. No-one_ knows!' Instead, he remains silent, with the grim, gritted patience of someone who's been stuck in this world doing godly duties for long enough to know that there's no point in complaining about Greater Truths, or complaining about their absence.

"Er, sorry," the boy adds when the silence has gone on just a bit too long, "M'not usually here. You probably don't remember me." He rubs his hand against his flannel shirt and sticks out an open palm. "I'm Harry."

"I know." Snape makes no move to take the offered hand; instead he folds his arms in a deliberately forbidding gesture. _Lily Evans' boy_. His lips thin. "It's much too late to be on my porch," he declares firmly. When the boy doesn't take the hint, he snaps "Go home!"

At least that brings the boy to his feet and sends him backpedaling away, down the porch steps until he's standing in the front yard staring up at him.

Years before Snape began to wear collars stiff and starched with the ever-present white square, Lily Evans and Severus Snape were in the same graduating class. Though at one time Severus thought he wouldn't live long past drinking age, it's Lily who's gone now, leaving only a stone in the town cemetery to remember her by.

And a son.

The tragic irony of life still stings, even after all these years. And Snape's not the only one stung by it.

"You are welcome to come back this Sunday," Snape declares before the boy runs too far across the gravel driveway, but even as he makes the offer he knows that Harry won't be there. Seekers aren't the type to bend easily to anyone's will. They're the type most likely to question, to leave their heads unbowed during the communal prayer, to open their eyes, seek out Snape's gaze and hold it in mute challenge: so sure in their self worth, in their assumptions about the world and about Snape himself.

Snape always makes a point of looking away. He's not about to let other people's assumptions define him. ...At least not any more than they already have.

He watches from the porch steps as the boy trudges silently off, along the highway to town. The dwindling crunch of his footsteps is the only sound, apart from the cicada chorus and the fluttering moths and the county sheriff's cruiser driving by.

* * *

The next morning, Snape takes the short walk out to the cemetery. He spends a few minutes staring at Lily Evans' stone. It's a small granite block, smooth as an unwritten book's pages. He bends to brush away a few dry leaves covering Lily's last name.

It's only as he finds himself looking down at the date of death that the realisation hits Snape. _She's been gone almost two decades. And I'm still here._ The stone must have been recently cared for; it's cleaner than most others. It's so strange to think that the last hand to touch it would have been her son's.


	2. Corinthians

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry is not the trusting sort, but Pastor Snape is used to taming strays.

_"Close your eyes. Let my words wash over you. You are safe now."_

_\- Welcome to Night Vale_

* * *

The next time Snape sees Lily Evans' son in his church. It's not on a Sunday. It's Friday evening, and most young men that age are speeding down the road with their radios blasting some defiant drivel, probably on their way to sneak into bars or brothels, or worse. And yet, here the brat is. Pale and dark-haired, but those bright eyes, that slight smile, make him look startlingly, achingly like a black-and-white yearbook picture of Lily. Someone that vivid would hardly talk to something as wooden as a cross on the wall, so Snape stays in the same room, offering mute company.

"It's OK, you know..." Eyes as green as the carefully watered church lawn meet Snape's, and for a second, in the stained-glass light, it almost seems like Lily's son is about to add something deep and meaningful and transcendent.

The moment passes, and the boy slouches, his hands joined over parted knees, clasped hard enough so his knuckles are white. "...you don't need to watch me," he continues in a defiant mumble, "I won't steal anything."

_As if I'd let him stay if he looked any less of an innocent._

Snape stays still, stays near, and waits for the right moment to move closer. It's much like tending to the feral cats out in the shed: all about persuading them to believe again, bit by bit, that no harm will come to them within these walls.

Harry's gaze travels along the empty aisle, back and forth across the pews. "I probably shouldn't even be here." He shrugs and huffs, as if admitting a weakness. "I don't really pray."

It's Snape's cue to sit down on the same pew as the boy, back straight, shoulders firm against the stiff wooden seat, leaving a safe arm's length of distance.

The boy looks up at him. He shuffles and knocks his knee into the stiff back of the pew with all the clumsiness of someone who'd never been told not to fidget during service as a child. "How do _you_ pray?"

It's almost a sensible, scholarly question to ask of a pastor, but the tone of Harry's voice makes the question personal. Prying. _Seekers._ The boy's probably not being deliberately nosy, but for a brief second, Snape is caught unaware. He composes himself with a downward stare and pieces together a reasonably acceptable answer. "Use your imagination, and suppose that God exists. Then use your capacity for trust, and think of what you would want to ask Him. Then ask it. I have been told it makes many feel better."

The boy's glance sweeps up to the crucifix, then to the direction of the cemetery, as if considering the difference between them. "How would that make _anyone_ feel anything? Talking to someone who never answers back! It's pointless."

Snape bites back a far less patient growl. "Instead of pestering me, you _could_ tell Him."

"Fine," the boy closes his eyes. His glasses are smudged. His lip, bitten. This is how the boy must look like, as he deals with loss by keeping a tombstone clean. "But do I have to trust him to even talk to him?"

It's a startlingly sensible question, coming from someone so young. "What reason do you have not to?"

"Well, you know... It's just strange!" Those green eyes are suddenly shifty, the boy blinks and adjusts his glasses. "Do you think he really hates me?"

 _Hates you?_ Snape frowns, regarding the boy suddenly with all focus and suspicion of an adult knowing full well how bitter it feels to be a teen and an outcast. _How can anyone hate an innocent?_ "Who told you that?"

"Books, church," The boy shrugs. "Who doesn't!" His eyes cloud over as if hearing someone speak, and he winces. _He may not attend my services_ , Snape thinks, _but his aunt, uncle, and cousin are here every Sunday._ He knows well the mournful squeak of his pews, under the burden of Vernon Dursley's looming presence. _Have_ _ **I**_ _done this? If so, what will it take to undo?_

"None of this is about hate," Snape says carefully. At least he hopes not, after all this time of wrestling with his own doubt. "Sometimes we may feel as if no one cares. That's not true."

"Liar. It's right there in _your_ book!" Harry snaps. "If God doesn't hate me why would he make others think I'm an -" Harry chokes and his mouth curls thinly in an expression Snape knows too well is not cruelty but pain. "-abomination?"

"You're wrong," slips past Snape's lips faster and harsher than expected. He realizes with dread that it's the worst possible thing to say.

"Forget it." Harry jumps to his feet. "This is a mistake. Sorry I bothered you."

"Wait! Harry!"

Snape reaches out, but Harry pushes past him.

The Bible in Snape's hands is knocked out of his grasp. It falls open at _Corinthians_.

"Harry?"

Pastor Snape is too old for this, certainly too old to chase after lost young men. Instead he bends to pick up his book. With yellowed fingertips he traces the part of scripture which he has never used in his sermons, but knows by heart nonetheless.

… _neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God._

When the painful verse stings his eyes and steals his breath and echoes pounding through his chest, he turns the page with a shaky hand, forces himself to inhale and release his breath in a deep sigh. _God, grant me serenity... forget courage, forget wisdom, serenity is good enough! Please let me have_ _ **that**_ _!_

 _How do you pray?_ the boy had asked him.

Snape huffs a pained sigh. He lowers his gaze from the crucifix to the floor at his feet and simply breathes. _Not easily. But then, nothing worthwhile in this world is easy._

* * *

There are verses in the Bible which do not speak of hate, which speak of humanity and humility, of compassion and courage. Snape speaks of them every week, he ought to know.

Next Sunday, as usual, Snape speaks the advice of King Solomon. _**Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you. Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm.**_ Practical, solid as ever.

On the next Sunday, he tries something new: _**Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David, with his armor, including his sword and his bow and his belt.**_ Reading the verses feels a bit like baring a part of himself he'd rather leave hidden, but he keeps speaking, even and calm, of loyalties and values of human companionship. Of friendships and kindred souls. He speaks of brotherhood: a family chosen in spirit rather than bound by blood.

As he looks up, there are unblinking green eyes staring intently at him from a remote pew. An odd sense of warmth settles over him, almost like satisfaction.

Snape is not the most fiery speaker ever known to the faith, but the resonant bass bell of his voice reverberates through the sterile white clapboard of this chapel, captivates this small-town audience every Sunday. This is his element. He can work miracles with his voice. _Listen to me,_ he thinks. _Just listen. Trust me. Let this help you. Let_ _ **me**_ _help._

* * *

Harry used to be relieved to stay on the farm when Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia dressed Dudley in his Sunday best and disappeared for several hours. There were hogs to feed and stables to muck out and the mountain of chores seemed like a holiday without Uncle Vernon hovering over his shoulder.

But now, attending Pastor Snape's sermons is far from an inconvenience, especially if Harry picks a spot behind the Dursleys instead of next to them.

 _Snape can talk! He can really, really talk!_ Hearing him reminds Harry of being eleven again, and crouched under the staircase at midnight, pressing his ear against the dying radio, just to make out the words in the transmission past the crackle of noise: distant echoes of a wider world, far beyond the town's familiar limits. Pastor Snape's voice is slow and dark like molasses, and it soothes him. It makes Harry stay and it makes him listen.

It's a game of sorts. When Harry keeps watching him. But isn't that what you're supposed to do in a church anyway, pay attention to the pastor? Nowadays, when Harry stares at Pastor Snape during prayer, even sizes him up shamelessly while every other eye is closed, Snape doesn't look away. He just speaks evenly, calmly.

_"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven..."_

Just as his voice lulls Harry into a peaceful trance, Snape gazes right back into the mute challenge of Harry's stare, and when he has captured Harry's full attention, only then he smiles: slow and sure and triumphant, the bastard. And the moment stills, in silence. Even Snape's voice fades away and all Harry hears is the beat of blood in his ears. All he feels is the burn of a coal-dark stare and it even makes him wonder, for just a second, if Snape is staring deep enough to read his mind.

_"… lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."_

Harry feels the traitorous heat spread from his cheeks all the way to his belly, and for the first time, breaks the stare and bows his head.

_"...For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever."_

_Argh,_ Harry thinks. _Stop that! Stop it right this minute. I am not_ _ **that**_ _easy to fool! Not like the rest of them around here. I don't believe whatever you say just because you read it out of a book. It's all lies anyway. We're born and then we die, and that's_ _ **it**_ _! Why would I ever want otherwise? It's not like anything they say will happen to_ _ **me**_ _after I die will be_ _ **fun!**_

But it's not really true that Harry doesn't believe in anything, not any more. Harry does believe in one thing now. Or at least he's starting to, in any case. He believes that Snape believes. Some belief apparently runs deeper than bowing your head during service and mouthing all the right verses. And Snape must have that. But how?

Harry's intrigued, and that, apparently, makes all the difference on how he chooses to spend his Sundays.

* * *

On the way back from Brighton, Snape leaves the windows down, letting the grocery bags on the back seat rattle like wind-filled sails. Three miles to Pleasant Hope, he spots the twin reflection of headlights on the glasses of a lonely hitch-hiker.

When Snape recognises the lonely figure as Harry he slams on the brakes.

The boy isn't standing idle: he's walking steadily, against the oncoming traffic. Not that there's much traffic heading back into Pleasant Hope at the moment. Snape leans out the window and calls out, "Good evening. Do you need a ride to town?"

Harry looks at him and shakes his head somberly. "No, not that way. But thanks."

Snape eyes him. Harry's school bag is slung over his shoulder. The bag's stuffed so tight the zipper won't close. One tattered sock hangs out like a panting puppy-tongue.

"Pastor Snape, do you know if there's a church, or a shelter in Brighton, or..." Harry doesn't finish the sentence. He doesn't need to. "Something that's open late."

 _A young thing like that out on the streets of Brighton late at night? They'll chew him up and spit him out, glasses and all._ Snape narrows his eyes, digs in his trouser pocket for his wallet. "Do you have _any_ cash on you?"

Harry bends down and dutifully holds up a rolled up paper cylinder, all fives and tens, looks like, then tucks it back into his left shoe. His stern glare stops Snape from even offering a fifty. Somehow he knows that the boy will not accept.

Snape sighs, and pushes the passenger door open. "Get in," he commands gruffly. "You may sleep on my couch this week."

"I have money!" Harry protests. "And I'm old enough to work! I don't need charity."

"Nonsense! You can tend to my garden as payment," Snape cuts him off. "It'll do my old knees good to save my kneeling for work instead of weeding, and it'll give _you_ some proper work to do."

Harry snorts but climbs in.

Snape eyes him suspiciously. The snort warrants an explanation.

"Your knees aren't old," Harry protests in response to Snape's stare. "No older than the rest of you, anyway! Not that the rest of you is old either! Knees and back and everything in between. I mean, it's fine! Great even!"

Snape hmphs his disbelief and plants himself further into the car seat. It wouldn't do for Harry to somehow parse sudden approval from his body language. But on the bright side, the flustered banter does seem to distract the boy enough for Snape to take him back to Pleasant Hope without further protests or offers of payment. He counts it as a small victory.

* * *

After bringing in the groceries, Snape pulls worn but clean linens out and spreads them across the couch. He gives one of his pillows to the unexpected guest. He surrenders a near-empty cupboard to the wrinkled, scrunched contents of Harry's bag.

He doesn't think of dinner until the groceries are stacked in the small refrigerator, and then he slaps together grilled cheese on toast. Snape holds out a plate with a double triangle of bread and melting cheese, gooey enough to stretch between the slices. Harry grabs the first skillet-hot slice off the offered plate and bites in, inhaling the grilled cheese sandwich with the speed and carelessness only a starving teen can achieve. _I'm an idiot,_ Snape thinks, _I should have offered him something sooner. He probably hasn't eaten since breakfast. If then._

"Um sorry," Harry looks up, timid as a stray cat, mumbling past a half-chewed slice. "I guess we were supposed say something first before the meal."

Snape smirks and quotes a particularly feisty old nun he'd met years ago. "No time. No meat. Good God, let's eat!"

Harry snorts out a mouthful of toast crumbs. " _Actual_ grace! Don't you do that? What with all the," he gestures around and toward the church next door. "You know."

"I was both graceful and genuine." Snape assures, and arches his eyebrow. "Unless you want your hand held?"

Harry's cheeks turn as pink as Snape's peony blooms out back.

Snape could almost keep up the teasing, now that he knows it works so splendidly, but instead he mentally chastises himself for teasing an innocent, hands Harry his second slice and heads off to the kitchen. There he rummages through the cupboards and fridge for a can of spam and a pair of eggs to break open onto the hot skillet.

 _Naive brat,_ Snape thinks almost affectionately, _the only difference between what he believes and what I do is that I have no problem acting out of necessity, or responsibility, and he just won't stop voicing the questions others rarely have the guts or the brains to ask me._

But he doesn't say that. Harry believes in people - in good people - above everything else, and somehow he believes in _Snape_ , and Snape finds himself incapable of shattering that blind, unwavering trust.


	3. Psalms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Green is, indeed, Harry's color.

_"All hail the glow cloud!"_

_-Welcome to Night Vale_

* * *

It's odd to sleep somewhere so quiet and so closed in: the room feels like an empty cellar. Harry can count on the fingers of one hand the nights he's spent away from the Dursleys' farm. The barn doesn't count as 'away' of course. That was where he spent most of his nights in the summer: in his makeshift hideaway amid the bales of hay, lying on an old horse blanket and falling asleep to the rustle of stirring livestock.

Snape's living room is small, with a leaky faucet in the kitchen just round the corner, and a creaky elm tree outside. A couch spring digs into Harry's side and he shifts away from it, throwing off the cotton sheet. Not that he really needs it; the night's warm enough. There's the distant wail of coyotes, far-off and lonely. An occasional faint hum of cars driving down faraway roads reminds him that there's more to life than this wilderness. It makes Harry miss his radio: left behind under the Dursleys' stairs, along with the rest of his childhood.

The match to the tinder that had been building for years, was the way Uncle Vernon abruptly forbade Harry to attend church anymore with the Dursleys. "What business can an abomination like you have in Church, with good, God-fearing folks? And just what sort of prank are you trying to pull, eyeing Pastor Snape the way you did! Answer me, boy! Up to no good again, are you? Well, you can forget about it: no mischief on my watch! No sir!" The smug, self-righteous look on his uncle's face was the last straw. Harry stormed out with a hastily packed bag and slammed the door behind him for good. The wide unknown stretched past the three wooden stairs was far more welcoming than the Dursleys farm ever was to him.

One thing is clear, at least: Snape doesn't believe Harry's an abomination. Maybe it's even true, and Harry's just as human as the rest of the world as far as the Bible's concerned. After all, a pastor would know the truth better than Harry's uncle.

He listens, trying to figure out if Snape's asleep or awake; but all is quiet, as if there's no one else there at all. Harry holds his breath, strains his ears even harder in the silence, tries to listen past his own heartbeat, and he thinks he hears breathing in the next room. He isn't sure if he's imagining it, but it's slow and steady and as he tries to match his own breathing to it, his mind quiets at last and his eyelids grow heavy and his thoughts dim.

At the Dursleys', Harry woke early, to feed the chickens, but there are no chickens to feed here, so he lies quietly, waiting as the early sun paints the yellowed wallpaper pink. Until he hears the creak of a bed and the sound of steady footsteps, and knows it's the start of a new day. Then he jumps up and folds up the cotton sheets, stacking them over the pillow, eager to make a good house guest impression on his first day.

* * *

After breakfast, Snape finds Harry out in the cemetery by his mother's stone. The surface is freshly cleaned and a wreath of wildflowers rests on top of the granite.

"Guess I was wrong, huh," Harry's head is lowered, his expression hidden behind that mop of hair, eyes downturned behind shielding lenses. "I told you before that it's pointless to talk to someone who doesn't answer, but that's not true." He reaches out to arrange the little spray of blossom on the stone. "I know she won't answer, but it's good to be here."

Snape is silent: the careful, cautious silence of an avid listener. It's the best way he knows to honor deep, personal loss.

"There are places in the world that _matter_. That _mean_ something. More than a dot on a map or a name. Like right here. Or right there too." He lifts his head for the first time, nods in the direction of the church and Snape's cottage alike, as a faint, reminiscent smile dawns. Only then does that vivid gaze flick to Snape's face. "Does that make any sense?"

Snape peers against sunlight at the road to Pleasant Hope. "Your home must matter to you in some way."

Harry makes a face. "It's my uncle's farm! Nowhere I'd call 'home'. They can have the place all to themselves, just like they've always wanted. It's not like I'm ever going back!"

Snape sifts through all the things he admired about Lily, trying to settle on something particularly relevant to her son. When at last Snape offers up the memory, his voice is halting, a slow murmur so quiet it barely disturbs the hush. "Your mother, she... left." Snape bows his head, turns his gaze away; giving Harry privacy, hoping the straggling strands of his hair hide his own expression. "Out of all of us, she was the one who was brave enough to actually leave town. For good. Never came back 'till they brought her body here. To rest in the family plot." _Ashes to ashes, dust to dust._

"What was she like, in school?"

 _A lot like you_ , Snape thinks. _A seeker._ He shakes his head and smiles, brief but honest. "She wasn't much for praying either."

_I am incredibly honored to have known her._

* * *

Sparrows scatter from the lilac bushes, dusty feathers and heart-shaped leaves all a-shiver at the victorious, diesel-smoky roar of the ancient lawnmower piloted by Snape's unexpected houseguest. Snape can't help but wonder if his tomato seedlings have all been cut to the root, sacrificed to a wandering turn of the mower going round the peony plants. He winces, worries, but doesn't look out the window. He certainly hasn't lived this long without other people making him abundantly aware of his many faults: he knows perfectly well he can be demanding. Perfectionistic. But he knows even more clearly that it won't do for Harry to think that he isn't trusted with his work, especially now, when Harry's still so uncertain of his welcome.

The smell of gasoline and freshly cut grass has filled the cottage in equal measures by the time the lawnmower suddenly goes quiet. Harry ambles in, loose-limbed with exertion, mopping his flushed face with one of Snape's old T-shirts (the one with the seminary logo, the irony!) Harry is tousled and sweaty and wearing perfectly ordinary jeans; but that bare torso, skin pink with sun, and the even sunnier smile Harry turns his way, make a picture worthy of the wondering gaze usually reserved for timeless artworks. Had Snape still been the same impressionable seminary student who'd once spent an hour staring at a chapel ceiling's timeless fresco immortalizing human skin, life and youth - he wouldn't have been able to tear his gaze away.

Harry is just as untouchable as that chapel ceiling, and Snape tells himself that it makes a bit of silent appreciation permissible: so long as it's carefully hidden, of course. He bites his lip and does _not_ acknowledge the heat on his face as anything other than a momentary reaction to the current weather. It is, after all, rather hot for May.

He forces his hand to unclench behind his back, and passes Harry a pitcher of iced tea. Wordless, calm, Snape is the picture of restraint. (It's not as if he's rushing to offer to apply lotion to all that pink skin!) He certainly doesn't comment on the sweat beading on Harry's body. If he watches a drop slide down Harry's chest as Harry gulps down the drink, it's only for a moment. If he does momentarily consider swatting that tempting backside to send the brat to shower - alone! - it's only for the sensible and fully justifiable reason of teaching him not to clutter up Snape's kitchen with his sweat-sheened self.

"Lawn's done," Harry announces, wetting his hand under the faucet and running it through his hair. "Anything else you need?" He glances back at Snape, splashes water on his cheeks, and blinks. "What? Have I got something on my face?"

"Do you have to ask?" Snape says, casting what can pass as an assessing look. He steps forward. After a moment of deliberation, he allows himself to reach out and pluck a blade of grass from that mop of hair, right above Harry's forehead. It would be so easy, Snape thinks, for a less honorable man to lie, and use that excuse to brush Harry's face, and then let the touch linger, follow the trail of droplets of sweat, down, down, down. _Harry should really be more careful in strangers' houses. Someone with far less scruples could so easily take advantage of his trust._

Even as Harry disappears into the shower, that blade of grass, green as Harry's gaze, still seems to weigh heavily against Snape's palm.

Every now and then, Snape's traitorous primal nature sweeps him up like a summer storm past tornado season, and when it hits with all that energy and need, even the reclusive refuge of the church's walls is no real escape. He thinks of Harry, separated from him by a thin wall, slim and supple as corn stalks in spring, face upturned toward the shower's spray the same way growing shoots face the warm summer rain.

The blade of grass in his hand is no longer than a pine needle. Snape doesn't have any excuse to hang onto it, but instead of throwing it out, he brings it to his face and inhales, catching the faint, evocative scent of summer.

* * *

They go out to Dobby's for dinner, at Harry's insistence. It's the only diner in town, unless you count the place at the gas station which offers nothing more appetizing than stale pizza slices or hot dogs off the heating rack.

At this hour, the near-empty brick-walled room is abandoned by regulars in favor of Abe's Corner - the local bar next door. The two of them are taking up a narrow booth next to the neon-yellow window sign. Snape spears spaghetti on his fork as Harry takes a sip of lemonade and lets out a teeth-grinding crunch, which means another ice cube had put up a fight and lost. He even crunches along to a tune on the radio. _Country station, as usual. Mediocre at best._ Snape prefers choral music, and not just because he's always been lead baritone in any choir he's ever sung in.

Now that Harry doesn't wolf down every edible piece, he is rather amusing company to observe. The second helping of paired meatballs in the center of his plate nests in a noodly pile spreading its saucy tentacles toward the edges. It's a masterpiece of sorts. Harry looks at Snape, leans in, sticks his nose in between the meatballs, nearly kissing his food and slurps in a stray noodle with a mischievous whistle. The tail end of it smacks him in the nostril with a splatter of tomato-red, reaching all the way up his forehead like a zigzagging flesh wound.

Snape can see the audible 'oh!' of unexpected disappointed display so clearly on that face.

"Bleargh," Harry says, licking his finger and then wiping the streak of sauce off his brow. "That's probably _so_ not what they mean when they say 'Touched by His Noodly Appendage'."

Snape sighs, bites the inside of his cheeks - the temptation is too great to go along with the game and mouth "Ramen!" - and lets out a nondescript groan instead. A priest, unfortunately, has his reputation to maintain.

"Where did you hear that?" he asks. _In this town. From whom?_

Harry shrugs. "Oh, here and there. On the net. And from my friend at the library."

"Just who is this friend?" _It can't be Pince; that woman hasn't befriended another human being since the Great Depression!_

"She helps out there. You probably don't see her often."

 _I won't see her in church, he means. Her. Not him. Certainly a young man with Harry's looks would attract enough of a female following to fill his head with empty Internet chatter. Just what else is this librarian girl teaching him between the stacks?_ Snape makes it a point not to ask further questions, but he suddenly remembers that his books are due this week, so it will be his sincere pleasure to make a trip to the library and stare down his nose at the meager collection. Just for the fun of making intelligent inquiries and watching the assistant librarian squirm in exasperation at the state of the town library.

Perhaps he'll even ask for recommendations on his reading; after all Harry here seems to be receiving such _useful_ advice.

"She's great, you know. Last year, right around Homecoming, she tried to start this thing at school called a GSA - um, that's Gay-Straight Alliance."

Snape nods. He is perfectly aware of what those three letters stand for, but he lets Harry explain. The animated way Harry's hands move shows how much Harry cares about this topic.

"The Principal didn't approve, of course. Hermione got in trouble: got herself suspended for three days! But if there's one thing about her it's that she doesn't give up. Never-ever. So in those three days, she looked up all sorts of laws and rules on the web, and apparently she's right and Umbridge's wrong, and even ACLU's site says it's illegal to stop GSAs or punish her for it." Harry beams. "Her mom and dad got involved. That showed them! And we're still meeting. Twice a month, after school. In secret, for now, but it's sort of an open secret. Everyone's welcome."

Snape smiles. He can't help it, Harry's youthful enthusiasm is contagious. "Sounds like quite an adventure."

"Yeah! Hermione always has these Brilliant Ideas! Poor Ron. I can't see how he can keep up with her, I really don't."

Snape's mind carefully maps out Harry's everyday existence from his ramblings. _Ron, Hermione. Must be quite a pair... Good! Harry can do better than a bookish small town nerd._

"What do you think of them?" Harry asks.

"Of whom?" Snape can't help but feel just a bit out of place here - out of place and time - in this Harry-dominated space and their conversation sprinkled with 'open secrets' and random 'noodly' appendages slithering off Harry's plate.

"Gay-Straight Alliances. In schools. Necessary or... just incredibly important?"

It's surreal! It really is, as if the universe turned inside out, sideways and onto itself, sharp abbreviated corners thrust through the center in complete disregard for space, for age. For order. In Snape's world, there were no GSAs. There were the bars, the baths, the closets... There was the easy societal acceptance of the seminary school. Of belonging: somewhere. Anywhere. Of being given absolution: a place and a chance to change the world.

Snape gives the thin-lipped, stubborn smile of a survivor who's fought the world since the day he was born. "Any alliance is usually a good thing." _… for someone like you, and like me._

Outside the seminary walls there was so much left unexplored for Snape. But the death announcements in the papers discouraged exploration, as did the ignorance, the stench of stigma, the fear of ostracism, the plague that did not have a name - did not need a name spoken aloud. There was always that terror of loving someone, anyone, on the back of Snape's mind, because the mere act of love however brief, could spell death.

It's not the same nowadays, Snape knows. There is no easy solution: only the ignorant and the power-hungry tell their flock that prayer cures all ills. But there is greater awareness, there are treatments and medicine. There is a name now. He prays that Harry will never feel the crippling fear and guilt of causing death - his own or his loved ones' - simply by the physical fact of love. That Harry will never have to resign himself to a life without closeness, simply so he and anyone he ever cares about can survive a deadly plague.

 _Maybe I am a coward after all,_ Snape thinks. _Perhaps it comes with being a survivor._

He takes a deep, shaky breath, but knows better than to ask for serenity at a moment like this. The more trials Snape survives, the more serenity seems like an unachievable dream, fading further from his reach.


	4. Chronicles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At Garrick's video tape rental, the movies find the viewer that suits them. Harry is next.

_"I fear for anyone caught between what they know, and what they don't yet know that they don't know."_

_-Welcome to Night Vale_

* * *

The video tape rental in town has something for everyone, or so the owner assured Harry: "Unless you are expecting something new, young man!" comes the senile whisper from the owner at the checkout. The old man's cloudy eyes glisten like a rolling camera lens.

'Anything New' is apparently everything from this century which was recently released to tape, Harry realises, as he takes a look through the dusty shelves.

"Can't be too picky in Pleasant Hope," the creaky voice assures Harry. "At least we've got videos to watch!"

Harry runs his fingers over the dusty plastic boxes with the sun-bleached cardboard covers. His choices are pretty limited. "How's this one?" Harry lifts up a VHS box, not yet visibly faded by the sunlight.

The reply, when it makes its way past the wheeze of elderly lungs, is both oddly specific and weirdly imprecise. "One and a half hours. Trashy. Good with popcorn."

"Oh." Harry lets go of the box and points at the next one. "And this?"

"An hour and fifty minutes. Sentimental. Best with tissues." The man behind the counter peers at Harry. The cataracts that have partially blinded him have turned his eyes a strangely beautiful, misty silver.

Harry looks up at the somewhat-cryptic boxes on the top shelves. Most of the titles have faded far too much to be readable. Harry reaches to pull one down so he can read it. The box teeters on the thin edge of the shelf and then falls, right on the top of his head, like a light-handed whack.

"Oops. Sorry," Harry yelps and grabs the box before it knocks anything else off its shelves. _'American Pie'. Eep. Yeah... Definitely not!_ He feels his cheeks flush with embarrassment at the thought of introducing Snape to this particular movie. _Wonder if the old man here's watched all of the tapes, including this one? Or_ _ **that**_ _one! And every single one from the Adult section!_

_Scary._

"Not **that** one. Obviously," the owner sighs and fixes his unnerving gaze on his only customer as Harry awkwardly slides the offending box back on the shelf. "I haven't seen you here often. What are you looking for today?"

"Um, dunno really," Harry scratches his head. "Something good to watch. W-with a friend. Guess we'll know when we'll see it. I don't think he'd like anything sentimental. Or anything trashy," Harry adds immediately. "I think he's more... old-fashioned."

"A fine quality in an audience. Try the older releases to your left."

"Oh, ok," Harry stumbles past the dustier shelves. His gaze shifts across the boxes. _Back to the Future_ , _Back to the Future II_ , _Labyrinth_. He's never really planned out an evening like this for anyone, and suddenly the whole idea seems as silly as the cover of _Swamp Thing_ right next to _The Return to Frogtown_.

He peers at the impressive lineup of _Star Trek_ films and suddenly, before he can change his mind, he grabs the third one, the one with blue Spock on the cover.

A glare like that is as icy as it gets. It reminds Harry a lot of Snape during his evening sermons. The stained glass window casts a strip of multicolored lights on the church floor, and when Snape passes through it and lingers, his face becomes a dual mask of red and green, a multicolored enigma.

The movie rental owner's stare lights up as Harry approaches the counter. "Interesting choice. Yes, ver-ry interesting: An hour and forty-five minutes. Slow-paced yet stirring. Best watched with a grain of salt and an appreciation for lifetime devotion." Gnarly fingers snap the plastic box shut and punch in the number in the cash register. "One ninety-eight with tax."

"Thanks." With a bit of luck, Harry fishes out a wrinkled dollar bill, three quarters, four nickels, and three cents from his left pocket. The owner sweeps the scattered coins from the counter and hands Harry the bagged tape.

"Best keep it until the weekend, young man. Enjoy your night."

* * *

Pizza from the uptown gas station is way too plain. As much as Harry likes gooey cheesy slices with a snowstorm layer of garlic-and-parmesan on top, what sort of guy would he be if he just shoved a few greasy slices at Pastor Snape instead of a proper thank you? Snape would probably lift his eyebrow at the 'offering' and dismiss him completely as a typical teen vagabond. That's _so_ not what Harry wants to look like!

So instead Harry sneaks into the kitchen just in time for Snape to start the evening sermons, and stirs spaghetti in the boiling pot, slow and even, just like Aunt Petunia always told him to do. He spoons the chunky tomato sauce out of its can with a plop and into a plastic bowl, and microwaves it diligently. To make up for all the canned'n'nuked ex-vegetable goop, Harry adds sprigs of dill and oregano, stalks of green onions, and garlic cloves white and shiny as oversized teeth; all of them as fresh as they could be, plucked quietly from Snape's herb garden just five minutes ago.

Harry sets the table in the kitchen just in time: he hears the conversations and the cars speeding off the gravel driveway of the church, and Snape walks in just a few minutes later.

"Well, that's done for the day. I didn't see you at the service..." Snape looks up and stops. "Harry?"

Harry stands at the table, basking in the sheer luck of a well-managed moment. He's in his best, newest school shirt, and he beams as he spoons out the first knotted bit of spaghetti onto a plate. "Surprise!" he points at the pair of plates and tries not to make the gesture so awkward. "Dinner. And a movie after! Want?"

It's really tough to say what Pastor Snape wants on any day, much less right now. One eyebrow lifts, but aside from that, Snape shows about as much emotion as if he's been told that the spaghetti plate is about to take his confession. Fortunately, he doesn't keep Harry guessing for long. "Starving." Snape drawls. Just like that, he takes a seat and reaches for his fork, as nonchalant as ever. After the first bite, he asks "What's the movie?"

"Ever seen Star Trek?" Harry grabs his fork, and grins over his own mouthful. "It's about aliens. And adventures in space. It's brilliant."

"I'd bet all the sacramental wine in my cupboard that you've watched it before," Snape smiles. The smile is sharp, stained with spaghetti sauce, and it makes Harry's mouth water.

"Um. Not all. Just bits and pieces, whatever's on late night TV." When the Dursleys had all gone to bed Harry used to sneak up into the living room to watch something in the dark, with the sound turned down to the barest whisper; sitting right in front of the flickering TV set in total awe at the late night features. Those episodes of _Cosmos: A Personal Voyage_ might as well have been _Emmanuelle_ , the way they would make Harry's cheeks flush, make his eyes starry and bright, and fill his entire being with distant longing for more: for discovery, for adventure, for sights beyond his little town or planet or even galaxy. The universe itself was so unthinkably, immeasurably vast, and watching _Cosmos_ made it so clear to Harry that he was a part of it all, living in it, rejoicing in its utterly incredible greatness, and taking it all in with every breath in his lungs, with every thought in his consciousness, with every fiber of his being.

Snape's dusty VCR swallows Harry's rented tape with a hungry gulp. They settle on the couch in front of the TV set, and Harry hunts and pecks buttons across two different remote controls until he finds the right combination to bring up the bright blue warning screen. When Harry sneaks a glance at Snape's face, lit by that eerie light, he's strongly reminded of the movie's cover: a gaunt Vulcan face, in vivid blues against a black backdrop of space. Like _Cosmos_. Like the blackness of this room: lights turned off to make the TV glow like the movie theater's screen.

_Spock!_

_Yeah, so very, very Spock,_ Harry thinks. The blue light has washed out Snape's skin, transforming the usual sallow tan to a strangely suitable greenish pallor; and Snape's beaky nose, harsh cheekbones, straight black hair, arched eyebrows and intent dark eyes all look pure Vulcan. That sight, that thought, makes Harry want things, so many things: to run his fingers through Snape's long hair, to lift those black strands and take a peek to see if maybe, just maybe, Snape's ears have Vulcan points.

"What?" Snape glances sidelong at Harry, as if he's finally sensed that he's being watched.

"Nothing. S'just..." After a long second, Harry breaks their joined gaze and looks down. "You look like someone I really, really like."

"And who would that be?" Snape arches an eyebrow, and even that familiar, tacitly teasing expression suddenly strikes Harry as Vulcan.

Harry gulps then grins, wide as a kid who's just been allowed to stay up late and watch TV past his bedtime. "Just keep watching."

Harry knows it isn't appropriate or fair to think about… about _liking_ Snape. _Not when he's a preacher. A very straight, proper preacher, who isn't interested in doing anything more with me than seeing a movie._

_Pity._

At least Harry's used to settling for what other people will let him have. Snape has managed to persuade Harry to attend his sermons regularly with nothing but his words and his voice; the least Harry can do in return is try to convert Snape into a proper science fiction fan. _No one with a functioning TV and VCR to boot should ever miss out on Star Trek!_

* * *

Snape keeps his usual snarky comments moderately polite while the movie goes through the usual routine of transparent-peril-overcome-in-inevitable-triumph. By the end of the movie it's obvious which character Harry had compared Snape to in his mind; though the earlier parts had been distinctly offputting, with a teenaged version of the character indulging in fortunately-mist-shrouded carnal activities with a female stranger. Snape indulges himself in turn, allowing his snippiness far freer rein during that scene than in the rest of the film. It's worthwhile just to watch Harry squirm.

Harry isn't squirming now. By the end of the movie Harry's curled up on his end of the couch, drowsy eyes almost closed behind his glasses. Snape sidles stealthily off the couch and comes back with an armful of sheets and a pillow. The darkness and quiet is broken only by the dim glow of the screen and the hisswhisper of rewinding tape, as Snape nudges the dozing boy's foot with his own. "Come on, you'll get a crick in your neck if you sleep like that."

Harry mumbles and grumbles as he gets to his feet, but it's all purely for form's sake: he helps Snape make up the couch obligingly. Then he strips out of his shirt. Snape swallows and turns his back as soon as Harry starts on the buttons, and doesn't relent until he hears the rustle of sheets being turned down. He turns back late enough that he barely glimpses a shirtless back as Harry lies down and rolls himself into the sheets.

The tape stops rewinding with a sudden hiss _click_ and is silenced as one bare arm slides out from the sheets to reach and press eject on the remote control. The TV goes dark and so does the room.

In the scant light from the kitchen, Snape stands for a long, silent moment, looking down at Harry as he snuggles his face into Snape's lumpy pillow, smiling as if it's the finest featherdown. Without those everpresent glasses his face seems younger, more vulnerable. Snape had never noticed his eyelashes before: with his eyes closed they are strikingly long.

The movie was forgettable, but the brat curled up on Snape's couch is anything but.

"Pleasant dreams," Snape murmurs.

Harry "mmm"s and his soft smile widens slightly.

However Harry sleeps, Snape's own dreams turn out to be unusually pleasant that night.

He awakes at four and gets up to get a glass of water from the kitchen. In the morning haze, he glimpses a sleeping figure sprawled on his couch. Harry had kicked off his sheet and is hugging the pillow to his chest. Before he stops himself from looking, Snape realises that he now knows exactly how many fingerwidths of pale skin spans across Harry's thigh, from the visible tanline right above his bent knee to the cotton edge of his underwear.

Forbidden fruit might as well taste like salt. " _God, grant me serenity…_ " Snape bites the inside of his cheek and turns away.

_No sense in going back to bed now._

Once in the shower, Snape turns the knob all the way to the right, and waits for the summer-lukewarm water to run cold before he steps into the punishing stream and hopes it will cool him down, in all possible senses.

* * *

Harry wakes up to the sound of the running shower. 'Pleasant dreams,' Snape told him before he slept, and Snape's deep, personal whisper, far more personal than a prayer, followed Harry into deep sleep like a lullaby. Like a mantra.

Harry's imagination doesn't need much to be allowed to run wild. He pictures Snape leaning in much closer, and whispering those words right against his ear, right into it. So close that Snape's breath warms his earlobe and moves the strands of his hair. So close that it brings out the burning in Harry's cheeks and sends hot blood rushing down his groin. And the words of personal confession Snape could reveal to Harry would be far more sinful and tempting, damning and devious.

Simple words they would be, scattering like broken prayer beads deep into Harry's mind, strung into sentences frantic and forward: telling of deep human need, of desire, and each word would burn on Harry's skin like a physical touch of lips. That's what Harry wants. Exactly that, from Snape: to watch a human side of him exposed, every inch of skin and every word of admission.

Pleasant, so very pleasant, each word would sound, and none of it would be a dream.

Harry breathes deep and draws the sheets over his groin. _Stop it!_ he urges himself desperately. _I can't take care of it here! Last thing I want is for him to see anything. It'd be just too awkward to explain._

But we always crave what we can't have, despite embarrassment or awkwardness.

The click of the water shutting off and the resulting silence jolts Harry from his morning daydreams.

_That was quick. If it was me, there'd be no time for barely… anything._

_Does Snape ever masturbate? That's the big question right there, isn't it? As big and as hard as it gets._

… _so to speak._

Harry grins impishly, relishing that thought for a moment, then he "Argh!"s and rolls over to bury his face in his pillow, hopefully hiding every bit of the flush he can feel burning in his face. Only in that feathery cotton-clean safety, can he explore the thought further.

_Gah, do preachers even do that? Maybe not. Maybe they give it up completely for Lent. Maybe it's just allowed on certain days. Like on a Sunday. Or every day that's not a Sunday. Or not at all._

_What does the Bible say about it? There was something about that poor married guy, Onan, 'spilling his seed' in the ground... So maybe it's a bad thing, like sin, but not a mortal sin. At least I hope not: Snape's a man, not a saint, so he's got to do something. Somewhere. Somehow. Otherwise no one in their right mind would ever become a preacher._

_Is it even allowed like that or does he get in trouble for it and has to apologise afterwards? But who'd he apologise to? To his boss?_

_To God?_

_Ha, hypothetically, besides God, who'd know? And I bet lots of things are OK if no one knows. That's how most Biblical instructions tend to go, anyway, 'OK if no one knows.' It might as well be the eleventh commandment._

Harry suspects that line of reasoning is unfair, but he has to admit there's a certain fairness too, in the way that it allows far more freedom than the alternative. _What else is Snape up to that no one knows about? Probably all sorts of delicious deeds. The Bible tells people_ not _to do all sorts of them, over and over and over again._

The Bible is anything but fair, but, to be fair, Harry doesn't know of any other religion that's any fairer.

_Argh. Enough of that, he's coming out._

Harry's pulling the sheets off the couch and folding them; he looks up as the bathroom door opens. "Good morning," he beams and Snape nods in reply as he leaves the bathroom. He's clean shaven, his hair wet and slicked back, but otherwise he's every bit as buttoned up from head to toe in black, as he is any other hour of the day.

Though he's just as much of a mystery as he was yesterday to Harry, at least one thing about him is settled: the tips of Snape's ears _are_ round. _About as human as ears get._ For some reason the discovery of a perfectly ordinary curve of a single ear is as stunning to Harry as if it had turned out otherwise.


	5. Tobias

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry's curiosity is tested, so is Snape's patience.

_"Remember: if you see something, say nothing, and drink to forget."_

_-Welcome to Night Vale_

* * *

On Saturday, Snape gets out a bag of sugar, a carton of eggs and another of milk, and carries it all out to the car.

"Need help?" beams Harry, rounding the corner. Never far behind. "I can carry stuff."

Snape shoves the whole lot at the overly-helpful brat and grumbles "Hurry up," as he unlocks the car. _I suppose it's that time of the month. Again. My penance for the sins of mankind, past and future. It'll only be harder if I delay it. Time to face the beast._

Snape drives ten miles south through corn fields, raising dust from the gravel road that billows in white clouds almost as high as a hurricane in the flat landscape. Across a creaky wooden bridge and crooked path, he turns off into a dirt driveway surrounded by overgrown elms. To the left lies a flowerbed of something dubiously weedy. To the right is a river-rock labyrinth; its neatly laid stones are bleached by the weather, large enough not to be overgrown by the prairie grass. Still just the same as they were all those summers ago, when Snape had wandered their meandering ways with a young boy's clumsy feet.

"Where were we going?" Harry asks behind his back. "Oh, what's over here?" Snape follows the direction of Harry's gaze.

Just over that hill is where the trailer park used to be, but now it's long gone, taken over years ago by far more mundane things than childhood dreams. Gone are the twin rubber tires hanging from gnarled oak branches. The old oak is no longer there, and neither is the park. It's a dusted-over dump of crumbling car carcasses and the rusty ribs of farm equipment rising from the cracked asphalt. The makeshift playground, and the red-haired girl of Snape's childhood exists now only in his memory. _As we swung higher and higher together, there wasn't a cloud in sight, and Lily told me in a breathless whisper that she thought she could fly. I believed every word. How could I not? She was my friend and she never, ever lied to me._

"Nothing worth asking questions about," Snape sighs. "This way, Harry."

"Huh!" Harry peers dubiously at the shack Snape is striding towards. "Does anyone actually live-"

Snape knocks. At the disturbance, a little more of the peeling paint flakes away from the door.

"Mother?" Snape calls.

"Did you mean -" Harry says. "- as in, your _mom_?"

 _What did he think? That I just_ _ **grew**_ _. In a dank corner of the church, like a mushroom?_ Snape fires a quelling glare over his shoulder, but luckily the tell-tale reply of "Severus?" from inside cuts in before he can voice his irritation at Harry's surprise.

"Come in, come in!" the same voice adds, growing louder with the faint sound of footsteps from within.

 _Of all the days for her to stay home… she just had to pick today._ Snape pushes the cabin door open and shows Harry through.

"You're late!" Her sharp, scolding tone shifts abruptly to oily interest, "...ohh, and _what_ do we have here?"

Harry beams and bounds forward to introduce himself with all the eagerness of a young lamb unaware of the slaughterhouse. Mother's sudden smile practically _oozes_ smugness at the spectacle. "Ssuch a helpful young gentleman. What a rare treat. Hell-lo, handsome, you look so good I could just eat you up!"

"Hi," Harry gulps, trying to look friendly. "Er, Mrs. Snape?"

" _Please_. It's Prince; I've gone back to my maiden name. After all, my _dear_ husband's been gone for years and years, and these parts could do with some royalty. But enough about me. Tell me about you. Harry, is it?" Eileen reaches for the pitcher of lemonade sitting on her table and Snape is sure that somehow she can see into his mind, right into the memory of another drink dripping down Harry's sweaty, heated skin. "Here, have a glass to cool you down," she purrs. "You too, Severus. Our guest's tales will be far too interesting to pass up. So," she fixes Harry with an avid stare, "what could _possibly_ persuade you to help a stiff, dour old church dweller like my son?"

"Um," Harry scratches his head and takes the first sip of a golden liquid. "S'good. Thanks! And er, m'not sure myself, ma'am." His grin is bright and contagious. "I guess it's his charm. Must run in the family."

"I like this one," Mother smirks conspiratorially, "Smart _and_ easy on the eyes. You should keep him."

Snape groans. _It was a mistake, a big mistake, to unleash her on this unsuspecting innocent. She's eaten lesser brats for breakfast._ "Easy, Mother. There best not be anything fermented in that pitcher. He's hardly of drinking age."

"Tsk. Just lemonade and love, Severus." Mother's wolfish grin is as honest as a used car salesman waiting to descend on an unsuspecting buyer. "Don't you trust me?"

 _Certainly not,_ Snape conveys with a silent glower, eyeing his mother down his nose. _I know you,_ he adds as he folds his arms forbiddingly. _If I thought you were old enough to know better, I wouldn't be living ten miles away, keeping a close eye on you month after month._

He breaks the stare only when her shrug shows he's made his point. Only then does he glance aside at Harry, to find him watching their byplay with open fascination. It's all Snape can do not to facepalm. _It's too bad that the obnoxious teenage attraction for brainless horror shows and poisonous junk already has Harry falling into her trap, hook, line and sinker. How does she do it? Can't be only through copious quantities of questionable garden herbs and stale Mountain Dew in that lemonade pitcher._

_I'm still too young to know. Or possibly too old to understand._

* * *

Snape's mom is far too interesting; Harry can't help but compare them. Their noses, their eyes. Their voices. Even the cautiously hidden ears covered by greasy hair. Though Snape's mom's wiry hair is streaked with silver all over and Snape's isn't yet.

She's definitely not like Spock though. Not at all. Too full of smiles and dry chuckles and teasing and searching glances that are far too disturbing to be merely curious, and her questions are all prying and bitey, but not enough to make Harry worry. _Maybe it's just her way. Most old folks are chatty and nosy. It's just 'cause they're lonely._

Harry waters her poinsettia, her ivy, her catnip and thyme, and then another cluster of hanging plants he can't quite identify, dragging a metal watering can heavy with well water from one window sill to another. He's under strict instructions not to use tap water. Apparently the 'chlorine-n-Kryptonite-and-Cleopatra-knows-what-else' cocktail brewed up by the local water tower is 'only good for adding flammable heads to Kool-Aid.' (She chuckles, rattles a box of matches, and promises to teach him that trick later.)

Her lemonade is sour and icy and sharp as her stare. Every word that comes out of her thin, smirking mouth is either questionable or a joke or usually both. But that beetle-black gaze doesn't miss much. That, Harry decides after long thought, is where Ms. Prince resembles her son most of all.

* * *

"What have you been up to since last time?" Snape asks her pointedly, after Harry, helpful as always, agrees to fetch more water for her outdoor plants from the garden well. A tabby cat curls up in the hanging planter outside, right around the leafy spider plant, as nonchalant as ever about the prospect of being watered by mistake, twitching tail tip poised in a curl above the cattail reeds.

"Severus, you should take care of yourself! Look at you, all skin and bone…"

"Save it." Snape eyes the locked door to the cellar staircase. "What's in the cellar this time?"

"Seriously, have you emerged from your church for a day? It wouldn't hurt you to…"

"What's in the cellar, Mother?" Snape is not about to try to rescue his Dear Old Grey-haired Mother from the consequences of her own pharmaceutical… experiments, any more than he would attempt to drink her under the table.

"Nothing! Not a thing. Seriously, Severus, it's nothing the state troopers, those lovely, vigorous young men, would fret over," Eileen fires right back with a cackle. "And they _are_ lovely this year. Such fresh meat," she purrs, as her gaze drifts over to track Harry.

"Mother…" Snape reaches for the deadbolt. He's hardly happy at the prospect of more cleanup: either of yet another 'chemistry lab', or if not that, of the resulting legal troubles.

Eileen steps between him and the door. "Oh, let me have at least a little fun. You'd get in far more trouble than I ever would, testing the sodomy laws with your young and impressionable… what is he by the way? Hm. Doesn't look much older than a freshman."

"Mother!" Snape growls.

"What? Dear me, did I say something completely inappropriate in front of a priest? 'Sodomy'. You must know the word, if you read that book of yours as faithfully as you think you do. The state troopers, toothfairy godmother bless their thick skulls, will enforce every paragraph and footnote of our fine law, I'm sure. How does it feel to have _all_ your books stacked against you?"

"You wouldn't recognize a 'fine law' if it sat on your nose and shimmied. And for your information," Snape hisses in an undertone, "he's seventeen!"

 _Only seventeen._ The stab of guilt is as thorny and persistent as his mother's insinuations.

"Really? Tsk, what a pity." Eileen shrugs. "A bit too old for a choir boy."

"The church choir," Snape replies in gritted tones that - judging by the smirk on his mother's face - don't have a scrap of effect, "is open and available to everyone who demonstrates the shred of ability to carry a tune. I doubt Harry would make the cut." Unfortunately, Harry outsinging the shower yesterday morning in complete and utter butchering of the Beatles doesn't count as 'shred of ability' one bit, even if Snape does generously round up Harry's odds to a two-in-five chance of hitting the right note.

"I'm sure you'll find _some_ use for him. A bright young thing like that, so _eager_ to be impressed with your knowledge of scripture. How does it go? 'Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me'?"

Snape draws a deep, calming breath. "It must be a special sort of skill, to take a source of strength and inspiration and twist it inside out, all for the sake of sinking deeper in that mental gutter of yours." Mother's jokes were actually funny when Snape was six: they were rare then, but far more bitter, with Father around. Now, they are tolerable on a good day. "By the way, you can stop fighting now," he adds acidly, "The war's over. Just in case you didn't get the memo, I graduated from Seminary, whether you like it or not."

"Hmph, and how is that working out for you?"

"Just fine," Snape intones.

"'Just fine'!" she mocks, with a stiff upper lip. "A fine mess! Upstanding citizen, prim and proper with a church of your very own, not a man to speak against you with God on your side. Psh. At least I don't pretend that a crucifix on the wall solves all my problems."

"Careful, Mother. You could be hosting the police instead of me. And they won't be nearly as forgiving of your cellar experiments."

"Want to test that theory? I'm sure your entire Sunday flock would just love to see me in the papers!"

Harry calls from the yard, "All done, Mrs. Prince." A tousled head pokes in the door. "Papers? What would they write about?"

Eileen breaks out in crowing laughter, too raucous to be genuine. "Never you mind, dear. Just ignore an old hag's ramblings: Severus always does. Until his own stubbornness comes up sooner or later, to bite him in his pale, bony ass." For good measure, a light smack lands on Snape's side. "Check him for bite marks sometime for me, boy. Someone ought to."

Never before has Snape wished his mother away so thoroughly or desperately.

* * *

They don't leave until nightfall. Mother has taken too much of a liking to Harry, like a spider with an especially juicy fly. She is positively salivating at the prospect of asking him just one more question. It must be comic books, or possibly movies. Either way, it's fine by him: with a mother who, he's convinced, can cause a crack in the church steeple just by stepping under it, Snape isn't looking forward to another spiritual debate at the dinner table.

So far the discussion seems to swings toward the key argument of who'd win in a wrestling match: Cthulhu or Godzilla. His mother is far too amused by Harry's description of either, and Snape's pointed stare does nothing to distract her from her slyly prying remarks. However, most of her insinuations of suitors or sodomites drift past Harry's ears like cigarette smoke, and for that Snape is thankful.

The screen door lets in the evening breeze, as warm and humid as a breath. The cat, Minerva, Minnie for short, has also been let in. She stretches up, hooks her front paws carefully over the edge of the rickety wooden table, and strops her claws. The methodical scratch-scratch doesn't disturb the Tarot deck spread out in a configuration Snape recognizes as a very standard Celtic Cross reading. Apparently Mother's had a client today: not a regular, not someone she feels obliged to go to an effort to impress. The smoke of Eileen's cigarette curls its meandering gray tentacles up to the kitchen ceiling, where braids of garlic and wilted bundles of sage hang drying above the stove.

It smells more of plain tobacco in her kitchen than Snape ever remembered before. Snape doesn't miss his childhood one bit, but even he has to admit that the occasional company of his mother's nosy, dubious circle of friends and the natural solitude has been better for her than Father's company ever was.

It's not as if his mother has mellowed out, even if she doesn't feel the need anymore for help from hemp. _The produce from Lovegoods' All-Organic Onion Farm a mile south causes fewer tears than anything she's ever cooked up, literally or metaphorically. Which is quite the achievement, since the Lovegoods' fertilizer supply comes solely from free range llamas and a wind-powered compost tumbler. Or so they claim._

Just like everyone else in Pleasant Hope, Snape has long learned to take the Lovegoods with a grain of salt and patience for conspiracy theories. _Any Luna Lovegood Conspiracy Theory op-ed in the Sunday paper is about as reliable as your average flying saucer sighting, and about as welcome as an alien anal probe._

Speaking of unwelcome probing, how ironic is it that Mother has snatched up this innocent into her web. There'll be questions later, no doubt.

Before they part, Eileen shakes Harry's hand, leans over and breathes a word in his ear with a suspicious smirk. Snape doesn't have to wait long to find out what she's up to.

"Huh?" Harry asks back, nowhere near as stealthy. "Tobias, what?"

"His middle name," Mother grins, ever so smug. "Use it well."

Snape cringes, unclenches his fists, and reminds himself yet again that matricide is a mortal sin.


	6. Song of Songs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry takes a leap of faith.

_"We understand the lights. We understand the lights above the Arby's. We understand so much… but the sky behind those lights - mostly void, partially stars - that sky reminds us we don't understand even more."_

_\- Welcome to Night Vale_

* * *

The road back home is dark and quiet, over the rattling wooden bridge and across the cornfields.

"So…," Harry drawls, sly amusement spicing his voice. "Severus Tobias."

"Don't," Snape growls forbiddingly.

"What? S'got a nice ring to it. Did she used to call you that when you were in trouble?"

"Tobias was my father's name," Snape snaps. The only other thing he cares to say on that topic is, "I'd rather not talk about him."

"Oh."

"He's the last thing either my mother or I want to talk about," Snape declares, as flat and hard and cold as the slab of stone covering a tomb.

Harry sighs. It's not aggrieved or irritable, it's a soft, commiserating sound. After a long pause, he replies quietly, "I never knew my dad. At least I don't remember him. I know where Mom is now, but Dad… nothing. Sometimes I used to wonder… if he's still alive somewhere, out in the world, looking for me. He'd be a real true hero, like a firefighter or a pilot, and he'd come and rescue me from my aunt and uncle and then we'd both go on all these magical adventures together and never ever return to the farm. Silly, huh?"

Snape keeps his hands on the wheel, positioned perfectly at 10 and 2 o'clock. _I used to hope that Lily would come back for me… Hope is a beautiful, terrible thing to have._

 _Looks like I'm not the only fool to hold onto lost hope._ Snape recalls the day when he stopped for a familiar hitchhiker on the road out of town. _In the end, I was the one to pick him off that highway to Brighton. I hope he isn't imagining me as some sort of savior…_

Snape glances aside at Harry. The glittering green gaze that meets him is trusting and admiring and full of something he can't quite explain, much less justify encouraging further. _I should really stop this._ But what comes out of his mouth is: "Harry."

It obviously doesn't work as a discouragement. Harry's whole face lights up at his name being spoken.

"You don't have to wait for anyone to save you from your troubles. We are all capable of saving ourselves. Just like you did."

"Hm. Guess so," Harry's voice is quiet, pensive.

As they round a curve, descending into a grassy hollow, Harry cries suddenly, "Hey, stop the car!" Snape slams the brakes. Harry's hand is warm and sudden over Snape's wrist as Snape puts the gears into neutral. A second of warmth, and then Harry lifts his hand and points off to one side. "Look, over there!"

"What?" Snape is still searching for deer in the headlights, until it belatedly occurs to him that the alarm in Harry's voice is not alarm at all, but excitement.

"Fireflies!"

Sure enough, under the starry sky, sparks of acid green kindle and flicker, moving low to the ground in slow and majestic drifts, like the surge and ebb of the sea.

_Fireflies._

Snape calms his breathing, pulls the car over into the ditch beside the open field, and switches off the headlights. Above them spreads a sea of stars dawning against the fading blush of sunset, and below them lies a field of grass, alight with the twinkle of living stars, such a bright, neon green: as bright as the glow-in-the-dark dials on the dashboard of his car. As startlingly unexpected as the flash of Harry's full stare from behind his glasses.

"Aren't they breathtaking?"

Harry's excited gaze is so vivid, so honest. It is, indeed, breathtaking. "Yes, nature can be," Snape echoes, neutrally.

Harry grins. "They're like living, breathing constellations, but you can catch them just by running after them and reaching up. Ever caught one before?"

 _Seems we'll be staying here for a while._ Snape shuts off the engine and rolls the windows down, risking a mosquito attack. "I can't say I've ever tried."

"Good," Harry declares, with conviction.

"Good?" Snape waves off an imaginary gnat, if only for show. The air is surprisingly clear around here.

"Yeah, beauty like that ought to fly free." Harry beams, unselfconscious and bright. "It's great to see it though, with the right person."

Snape watches the firefly-lit field, and the stars reflecting in Harry's lenses. The rustle of the wind through the grass is like the low murmur-and-hiss of the radio between stations. Like the whisper of waves on sand, hundreds of miles away.

 _He'll fly free, soon enough,_ Snape thinks. _I've only delayed him. He'll leave Pleasant Hope like his mother did, and just like her, he'll never return._

_I can only be happy for him. Everyone who thinks life is worth truly_ _**living** _ _takes the road out of town, sooner or later. Harry almost left already. I can only hold him here for so long. But I'm thankful for all the time I can get, together with him, before he leaves._

They stay sharing the silence as the moon rises, huge and luminous and golden over the hilltop. The scent of grass and earth is even stronger than usual in the damp night air. Fog fills pockets of low-lying ground until they look like moonlit ponds, and all the humidity makes Snape's ears pop as if he's underwater, makes his head swim as if he's floating.

"Did you ever… um. Can I..."

 _You can ask,_ Snape thinks. _I may not answer._

But Harry doesn't say another word.

 _This isn't floating_ , Snape realizes suddenly, _this is drowning._ His thoughts are so distorted and slowed down, as Harry leans in, toward him in the dark, resting his hand on Snape's hand as Snape's hand still clutches the gear stick, and he's still sinking deeper and deeper in. He can feel it. Harry's face is as close to him as Snape's own shoulder, and for some reason Snape keeps gazing at their reflections in the windshield, glowing firefly-green and strange in the light of the dials. As he stares he feels oddly detached, as if all this is happening not to him, but to a mirror reflection of him in some alternative, twisted, glorious universe in which he deserves absolution; as Harry leans in even closer and his breath warms Snape's cheek, his lips touch Snape's jaw.

 _I mustn't give into this. I must speak to him. I must stop this at once._ In silence, Snape turns, but Harry's here, right here. With him. Because that's where Harry wants to be.

Or does he? Snape has to make sure. Carefully, softly, he reaches for Harry's glasses and pulls them off. He's had enough reflections. He needs the truth.

Harry turns, catches Snape's wrist, presses his mouth against Snape's palm, in something that can't be mistaken for gratitude anymore, as he leans into the touch. "Can I?" he repeats. "Is it OK? - Like this?"

Harry's irises are dark, so dark the green in his eyes comes only from caught neon-green flecks of light. His hands are over Snape's elbows. His voice is a bare whisper. He's babbling. It's endearing. Enticing. Unforgettable.

Snape lost his way in this warm green sea long ago. So he lets himself drown.

* * *

The slow and gentle caress of lips, the sharing of breath and touch that follows is truly a kiss of life.

* * *

The field and the flickering dance of fireflies is very special to Harry. One evening, when Harry had enough of the farm, of the Dursleys, he left everything behind and started walking. Everything, from the stars down, seemed so unreachable. He got as far as old Figg's field and was stopped by a vision, a swarm of fireflies descending like falling stars, flying within Harry's reach. He turned back and was home by morning, but that vision of wide open night fields lit by fireflies had stayed with him, vivid as ever, even years afterwards.

_There's magic in the world, if you know where to look for it._

_Magic_. That's as close as Harry ever comes to believing in _something_ outside of the mundane.

Today, as Snape drove them round the turn past the bridge, it was absolutely crucial for Harry to share that special moment of glimmering lights in the distance with someone. Not just with someone. With Snape.

The stars are amazing, with their supernovas and their bright giants and the superclusters of galaxies, up to one billion light-years wide! But the fireflies are even more amazing, because they are alive and right here under Harry's nose and within his reach: " _Lampyridae are a family of insects in the beetle order Coleoptera,_ " says his biology textbook, and it sounds like a spell. " _Bioluminescence_!" he whispered to himself while reading that particular chapter. " _Larvae…. Glowworm…. The enzyme luciferase acts on the luciferin, in the presence of magnesium ions, ATP, and oxygen to produce light!_ " Just saying that sort of thing aloud lights up the room, faster than a supernova.

And now, fireflies light up the world: brighter than the distant house lights from Pleasant Hope, and more unpredictable than falling stars, and he absolutely has to show them to Snape on a night like this! Grabbing Snape's hand is the first thing that comes to mind, and it's totally subconscious and he doesn't even realise it at first. It probably isn't the proper thing to do to someone who's driving, but nothing happens, just the steady hail of gravel being flung from the wheels, and then they stop, and the fireflies are all still there. And Snape is looking at them, really looking, through the windshield. And Harry knows he understands.

_He may be in charge of a church, but Snape understands all the important things. I know he does. We all need a reminder once in awhile: how small and fragile and beautiful and precious we all are among these unobservable galaxies of stardust and space, from the tiniest glowworm to the giant Galápagos tortoise, from a shifting grain of sand to the darkest stormcloud._

All those things Harry tried hopelessly to explain to others ever since he was young: the simple revelation of taking reality moment by moment as it is, just _is_ , not as it might be with the remote possibility of divine tampering.

"Did you ever…" Harry has no idea how to phrase it, doesn't know the words that could convey how beautiful every glimpse, every breath truly is to him right now, so he just asks, low and breathless, "Can I?"

Snape tilts his head, fixing Harry with an intent, inquiring look.

Harry does the only logical thing he can do: leans closer and sees stars in the darkness of Snape's eyes and it's pure concentrated magic, all in one person, and Harry believes in it with all his heart. He lets himself fall in. Snape's hands are on his glasses, taking them off. The inside of his wrist tastes of salt when Harry presses his mouth to it. _Like this, let me, please._

" _Can_ _I_ ," Harry carries on and keeps falling, falling, until they kiss and it's frantic and awkward and wonderful, the way their breaths mingle and their lips meet. Harry climbs forward, over the seat and Snape reaches for something and lets his seat fall back a bit and there's a sigh, a groan, from him, from Snape, it doesn't matter, nothing else matters, as Harry lets his weight rest over Snape's shoulders and just lets the universe be, staying in that one perfect moment. Kissing Snape.

And then there are arms around him, big hands sliding up and down his back as Snape falls back and pulls Harry down with him and Harry's hands are in his hair, fingers tangling in long strands, holding his head still as the kiss turns hungrier, open mouths and their chests heaving against each other and it's warm, so warm, Harry can feel the heat in his skin and his head's spinning and he surfaces just enough to take a breath and their panting is so loud in the night.

He swallows, still panting. Licks his lips. It's dark in the car and he blinks and suddenly he wishes they were outside, out under the stars and the full moon because he wants to see Snape's expression, he wants to see his face and his body. He wants everything. "I need..."

"Husssh." One hand peels away from his back leaving a patch of chill, and then that hand lifts to his face and there's the gentlest possible brush of fingertips against his mouth. Harry's lips are strangely sensitive, kiss-swollen he realizes with a jolt, and he grabs Snape's wrist to keep his hand still, just as he'd clutched Snape's head, and he leans in to press slow deliberate kisses, every bit as gentle, to each fingertip in turn. His other hand is free to roam, to feel the hard chest under the dark shirt, and he can't quite believe still that he's got Snape here, right there. A magical moment, a magical place, and the man in his arms whom he trusts fully, unconditionally with a shared secret for two.

"...I know." Snape's voice is barely above a whisper, yet quiet as it is, Harry can hear a strange roughness in it, like a burr in its usual dark velvet. "Harry, I know." The hand that Harry's not holding brushes his mop of hair back from his brow, but when he leans in for another kiss that hand stays there, holding his head gently away.

Harry frowns; surely Snape can feel it, his fingers are still touching Harry's forehead. "Wha…"

Harry still can't see well, but he can hear Snape swallow. "Harry," and is that a note of sadness now, among that new huskiness? "We should…"

But whatever Snape was going to say is forgotten. Suddenly a stab of yellow light cuts through the night, eclipsing the stars and the fireflies, banishing the intimate darkness. The harsh blaze of headlights grows brighter and closer by the second, and the sudden crunch of tires on gravel and the growl of the engine shatters the quiet.

The car rolls to a halt beside them, and the engine goes quiet, though the headlights are still dazzling. Harry blinks the glare from his eyes until he can make out the car, and now it's his turn to gulp.

_It's the police._

Harry's halfway in his seat and it's probably a lost cause by now, but still he fumbles with a trembling hand and pulls at his seatbelt covertly, promptly buckling it with a click.

Just in case.

The car door opens. "Hold it right there. Explain yourself."

"Er," Harry sinks deeper into his seat. What are the odds of surviving a car chase with the police? Perhaps he and Snape should take off right now. Because anything - anything! - even a Thelma-and-Louise sort of ending is better than being questioned by Officer Moody. There's no cliff around here that's high enough to scare Harry worse than explaining to a cop what they're doing out here, or anything about what just took place between them.

"Hey, Moody, stop scaring the locals. At least wait until they actually start radio-transmitting spy signals to the Soviets on freshly cooked meth fumes before acting like you've caught them at it."

"Locals? Ha. Who'd drive all the way out here and why?"

"Didn't you recognize the plates? You're slipping, Moody. That's Reverend Snape, it is."

"Well, I'll be damned. Sorry, Reverend. Ahem. License and registration, please?"

"And that's Harry. He's been staying with Snape for the past month." Tonks beams. "'Sup Harry? How are you settling in?"

 _Whew._ Harry feels his lips stretch in a grimace, hopefully friendly enough to pass as a smile, and croaks: "Tonks! When'd you come back?"

"A while ago. After I finished up at the academy. I guess it's true what they say, nobody ever leaves Pleasant Hope. Something about this town, eh, Harry?" She winks and pumps her fist in the air. "Go Pirates!"

Harry grins. Tonks was a cheerleader for the Pleasant Hope Pirates in high school when Harry was barely in Junior High, helping Ron's mom at the refreshment stand, serving popcorn and hot dogs and soda to older kids. He still remembers Tonks celebrating one of the few times they won a game. She'd put on a plastic purple eyepatch to match her Kool-Aid-stained purple hair, and had even scrawled a quick mustache in eyeliner across her upper lip. A proper Pirate. She ruffled his hair once with buttery fingers, as she picked up the last popcorn bag, and popped a new tape into the Walkman at her hip, like sliding a gun into a holster. "Don't you worry, kid, this year we'll beat the Spartans for sure."

The Spartans won the Homecoming game almost every year Harry was in school, but only because every single player on the team held a grudge against Pleasant Hope and wasn't above cheating to get their way. But Tonks never let that spoil her cheer. She was so, so cool.

Moody's got a real eyepatch and a real mustache, and Harry's quite sure that he's got a pipe somewhere too, with some acrid, bitter leaf tobacco like a seasoned sailor would have around. He looks more of a pirate than the Pirates logo painted up on the water tower, and that one's got a 'stache as thick as Harry's wrist.

Moody hmphs and sounds more like Uncle Vernon than any pirate ever ought to sound. "No parking lights, best get that fixed, Pastor. And get the boy inside. Not good for schoolkids to be out after dark."

Snape starts the car.

Tonks leans over toward the passenger window where Harry is trying not to tremble. "It's all for show," Tonks confides in an undertone to Harry. "He says the exact same thing to me whenever I ask to do the night shift alone." She winks at him and straightens up; he sees her wave in the passenger mirror. "Stay out of trouble, kiddo!"

 _Easy for them to say when I'm already in more trouble than I can tell!_ _Bet neither of them ever kissed a preacher!_

Harry's heart skips a beat. _Sometimes trouble is necessary, especially when it steals your breath away and turns out so much better than you've ever dreamed of, and so worth the wait._


	7. Lamentations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Events cast a light on the contents of Snape's closet.

_"Children, the night sky may seem like a scary thing sometimes. And it is. It's a very scary thing."_

_\- Welcome to Night Vale_

* * *

Snape takes his time, pulling the car into the empty driveway past the church parking lot and next to his cottage. The car shakes and rustles climbing uphill over the familiar curb. The overgrown lilac branches slap against the windshield, leaving a wet trail of dew and wilting petals.

Harry's seat belt clicks free and the click stings like a loaded gun: one of Moody's prized pistols. The sound is casually impersonal, as only the cold steel of a deadly weapon can be when pointed right against your ribs.

Snape turns off the ignition and takes the car keys out, the familiar routine taking over to tame the panic.

_Home at last._

They take the sidewalk to the back door in silence. The smell of lilac, bitter and fragrant, fills the humid night. Ursa Major shines, hanging sideways over the church steeple. The porch light flickers, grows dim in silence and in stillness. Only the stars stay lit. On the nights like this one, the entire world is upturned, the starry bowl of night sky under the hanging earth, that dying porch light the only beacon of humanity into the starlit expanse. All that empty space stretches on, filled with unreachable galaxies of stars and unfolding farther than imagination. The void of the world is both beautiful and terrifying. Is that why countless, scattered humans always seek out something named, be it the familiar constellations or each other's company, to distract one another from the sight of an endless suspended abyss?

The infinity of the known and the yet-unexplored universe is a frightening sight, a chilling thought. Snape shuts the door against all such infinities but it doesn't help: Harry follows him in. Even here and now, in Snape's sanctuary against the outside world, the universe manages to seep in and invade through the cracks. Sure enough, soon enough, he's met with a dazzling, frightening sensory experience. Harry stumbles into him with a soft gasp, and leans closer, plastering himself against Snape's back. Touch, breath, sound, and sightlessness all meet to conspire against him.

"Severus." Harry’s whisper sounds like a secret, a confession. The kind that rasps from Snape's raw throat in the nights when he's honest with himself and is too tired of asking the universe for an answer. Unbidden, unexpected, gentle arms slide and wrap around Snape's waist. Snape can tell the exact count of years, months, and possibly days since the day he was hugged by another. (Two Christmases ago there was an _"Oho-ho-ho!"_ and the shock of being lifted up a foot up from the icy homeless shelter steps and then carefully set down. The cheery bearded giant could almost have been an unwashed, alcohol-soaked Santa Claus, and up to this day, Snape is quite sure that the vagrant merely mistook him for his pet hound.)

The tiny flash of memory is gone, irrelevant in the shock of the now. Harry obviously knows exactly who he’s trying to embrace. Just as obviously, that doesn’t mean Harry really understands what he’s trying to achieve. Snape can feel the imprint of a nose and twin arches of glass frames in his back, right between his shoulder blades. Harry's breath is warm against his upper spine.

 _Oh._ It takes all Snape has not to lean back, luxuriate in the support, give into the inevitability of this. It's quite a mess, the two of them alone together. A beautiful, frightening mess waiting to happen, an onslaught of emotional honesty in a single touch, just waiting to crack open every mental shell and shield Snape has raised out of instinctual self-preservation or by necessity.

"I can't believe it." Harry breathes, feverish, frantic. "We're OK. It's all turned out OK!"

 _I can't. I…_ Snape can't get the words out past the dry, choked throat. He is spun around, pressed against the shut door. Harry's entire bony frame is pressed hard and hot against him, shaking with adrenaline, with emotion. Harry's hands slide up Snape's spine tracing each and every bone until his fingers settle on the back of Snape's shoulders, right under his collar.

"They didn't see. They didn't see anything. And they can't see us now, not here. It's over. Whew."

Snape inhales and even now Harry's hair smells of green grass and fresh earth under the summer sun. So close. So warm. So sinfully, stunningly human.

"Harry." Snape turns his head, gasps into a wiry, firm shoulder. He pries one hand loose from its hold. He fumbles for the light switch, flips it, and his vision is flooded with light, with the proximity of Harry's green, worried stare.

A second of unspeakable brightness and then there's a sharp crack and it all goes dark. It takes Snape a breathless second to flip the switch again in a futile gesture: _I just put in a new bulb last week!_ The switch for the reading lamp in the corner works, dimly lighting the room in green.

Harry clutches Snape to him, holding him close - almost as if he is something precious. That can't possibly be true, and so all the rest must be a lie, or worse, a trap. Harry's lips are wet and soft and _not_ kissing him but this close to doing so, and the sight of them makes Snape's head spin as if the unthinkable happened and gravity failed, and he's falling upward into the abyss of the night sky.

"Harry. Stop."

"Why? What's wrong?" Harry's forehead is so hot, as hot as his breath feels, as Harry pulls back and presses his face against Snape's cheek.

"We can't just -" Snape pants. "We _can't_."

"Why?" Harry's stare turns in the direction of the church, the question obvious in his eyes, as his gaze flicks back to Snape's in a mute challenge. "I _care_ about you. If we _care_ like this, it's _not_ a sin."

"According to who?" Snape huffs. Perhaps it is his finest moment of avarice. Like a dragon with treasure, he can’t quite pry his arms open from the short, youthful body in his hold.

"Me. Everyone! It's common sense." Harry murmurs. "It just is. Trust me! It's OK!"

One breath at a time, Snape attempts to let go. He starts with a step back. "OK?" he latches onto the ridiculous assessment, bristling from the loss. "OK! The entire world is suddenly OK, because one young man said so, well then it _must_ be true. Grow up!" he cries out indignantly. "Harry, this is not a game!"

"What?" Harry steps back. "This was not a game to me! Never!"

That step back has brought the burnt out light into Snape’s field of view, just over Harry’s head, and for the first time Snape notices something extraordinary. The lightbulb is completely gone. Not burnt out. Not shattered. Gone.

_Banished. The proper word for it is 'banished', like Mother banishing dust and the postman’s footprints and Church flyers off our doorstep every Sunday when I was a boy. As if someone with the Gift found that lightbulb so inconvenient they wished it out of the socket, out of sight, out of existence._

**_I_ ** _didn't do that,_ Snape thinks. _I’d never do anything like that, not when someone else could see. But if not me, then..._

 _Did_ **_Harry_ ** _do it?_

That prospect is like a final betrayal in the long, long chain of betrayals that is Snape's entire life. Like Lily, leaving Pleasant Hope - and Snape - behind for the freedom and acceptance of Salem, Massachusetts. Like her death two years later. Surely if Harry's capable of an underhanded trick like that, he also knows precisely what he is doing to Snape. This shocking revelation is nothing like the horror of wide open starry skies: Harry must know exactly what he's after, and has meticulously planned every step of his trap.

"Why would you even think that?" Harry adds, quieter. "Today - with you - when I kissed you... This is the most serious thing I've done in my entire life."

It's hard to breathe, as if in one failed breath Snape has been buried under many layers of dirt and dust and weeds, and there's no use fighting against gravity.

Nothing this good can ever be a natural turn of events. Such sudden, wonderful windfalls simply do not happen by accident to someone like Snape. Therefore it's deliberate. And deliberation can only mean a trap.

"Say something." Harry looks terrified. "Please!"

Snape draws a breath. "This stops now," he commands, willing his stomach to stop sinking into the bottomless pit, curling his fingers into claws at the undeniable reality of the situation. "Whatever this is to you, it's dangerous for both of us, and I want no part of it. You must understand, I never consented to being the subject of a youthful experiment!"

"An experiment?" Harry's eyes widen in outrage at the accusation. "Is that what you think this is?"

"What could you possibly imagine would happen?" Snape carries on, overriding him, because he can't hold back the truth with further denials of reality at hand: "You'll be off to college soon enough - oh don't even try to protest - you will! There, you'll have plenty of stunningly hot young men for your... experiments. And I'll be stuck _here_. Alone." _Thinking of you. Missing you. Wishing I was one of them._ "Harry, this - _us_ \- won't work. Ever."

"Why?"

"Why _what_?"

He expects Harry to question the obvious, but instead, Harry asks something else, his voice deep and soft. "Why are you 'stuck' here?"

It's only then that the tangent strikes Snape, suddenly as obvious as the ceiling lamp he's now carefully avoiding glancing at, that Harry hasn’t once followed his gaze upwards.

_Maybe he doesn't even realize he's done it._

_Maybe he doesn’t actually **know** anything! If so, I’ve got to keep it that way!_

"What’s keeping you here?" Harry pries, "Really, what?"

Snape sneers his disgust at his own unforgivable mistake in letting the word out. At Harry being attentive enough, clever enough, to pick it out. For being an impossibly enchanting young man who maybe, possibly cluelessly, commits the impossible on a whim and an accident, leaving it up to Snape to deal with the fallout of consequence. "Isn't it obvious? No? Well then, the world must be positively bursting at the seams with spare pastoral positions for confirmed sodomites."

Harry pulls back a bit. His stare narrows. "Come on. Don't tell me you're _that_ jaded. People are not completely horrible. I'd like to think some are reasonably human. Do you really think there's not a single church in the world that won't be OK with this? With us?"

"Yes!" Stating the obvious has never been so exasperating. "It's the church." _The only human trait Snape has persistently, reliably witnessed over and over was the act of casting away the deviant, the outsider. Why would the church, any church, go against human nature?_

"So who says you have to keep relying on something that would never accept you? There’s nothing else in the world you can do?"

Snape stops. _Truly, if one considers tending to a cemetery and providing quality counseling a suitable alternative, I could expand into all manner of service positions. Or if I take a leaf out of my dear Mother's book and pretend the answer to life, love, and the universe lies in a deck of cards, I could liberate endless gaggles of impressionable fools from their money merely by reassuring them that their world won't end the next time Mercury is in retrograde. How different, really, would that be from absolving them of sins as they confess? Absolution, far more often than not, becomes a currency for those who realize it can be turned more tangible than a taste of power, and far more precious than gold._

Snape shakes his head slightly, wearily, doing some banishing of his own, dismissing this entirely futile line of speculation. "Harry, this is my life. Do you expect me to throw _all_ of that away on a whim? I _can't_ not be who I am. This is what I _do_. I have a place. I have duties. I am responsible for my parish. They need me."

Harry's eyes are bright and wet in the dark. " _I_ need you," he rasps quietly. It's not a question. It's not even an argument.

_What can anyone say to that?_

"Look, let's not do this..." Harry sighs and shakes his head. "Not now. You're tired, I'm tired. I’m going to bed. You should too."

 _Ah, finally something sensible out of that mouth._ Snape bows his head in resignation, hoping the shadows of his hair hide his wince at Harry's confession of need. He draws a long breath, loud in the stillness, and squares his shoulders. "Good night."

"'Night," Harry murmurs and meets his eye. A hand rests on Snape's elbow and lingers.

Snape accepts it as a compromise. "Pleasant dreams."

Snape knows he should feel relief. Seekers are supposed to be annoyingly persistent until the last possible moment. They pry and prod and never ever give up.

_He hasn’t given up. Not yet. This isn’t the end of the battle, just a temporary cease-fire._

* * *

Snape listens to the silence and hears the screech of a bathroom door, the slow drip of the water in the sink, the rustling of turned-down sheets on his couch, until he is forced to admit that Harry's motives are as sincere as his every other move. Even if Harry's current goal is to leave Snape alone to his privacy, to his thoughts, to his self-flagellating mental habits and the ever-brewing acidic concoction of guilt and bile and regret in the silence of his own mind.

But even as he adds a mixture of 'irresponsible', 'selfish', and 'fool, fool, fool!' to the ever-present, spitting, simmering mental brew, Snape wonders and asks himself something that's not guilt-inducing or punishing: _When did he get so mature?_

 _It's more than I can say for myself._ Snape recalls the frantic, forward kiss in the dark of the parked car on that country road to Mother's place. He can still taste Harry's dry, chapped lips, and all his gentleness and desperation. _It’s far too likely that that was Harry's first real kiss._

_It should have been with someone his own age, someone as gentle and innocent as him. Someone who deserves his attention and desire, someone who’s free to return them in full. Not me. I should have never let this - whatever this is - develop this far._

_We're both fortunate that it ends here._ Snape reminds himself. _It's much easier to stop now than suffer the results._

He closes the door to the bedroom behind him and this doorway is far more mundane to step through. No one follows him in. No one argues with him. No one invades his personal space.

No one kisses him.

There's a line of light on the floor of his room where there should be none. It's coming from the far wall.

Snape is almost - almost - unsurprised when he opens the sliding door to his closet only to discover a floating lightbulb unattached to anything as mundane as an electric wire.  Against the laws of physics, against the fact that it shouldn't exist at all, here it is. Persisting. Shining. Not disappearing in a puff of smoke at his touch. Its light is so bright, it makes him squint.

Far be it from Snape to leave an unexpected fire hazard overnight.  He cups both hands in a sphere, fingers spread a little distance around the hot glass, and concentrates. Breathes in. Feels the air expand his lungs. Breathes out slowly through his nose.

_God grant me serenity…_

The routine of taming the chaotic, crackling energy is as familiar as a prayer.

When Snape was ten, he broke into Mother's cellar stash of grimoires and jars by chanting insistently at the bolted, warded, spelled staircase door until the hinges creaked and the door slid open like an opening book to his touch. This is no different. He's always had a knack for taming Mother's magic, if not her curses. Apparently not only Mother's magic, if the contents of his hands is anything to go by.

The light bulb grows dim and cool enough to touch and falls into his cupped hands like an apple from a tree, an unexpected harvest from his conquest. It's still residually warm, its glass as brittle and delicate as a Christmas tree bauble heated by faulty fairy lights.

The electric charge in his fingers travels up his arms, light as a bubble, ticklish like the static in Harry’s untamed, feathery hair.

_Oh, Harry._

Apparently stirring trouble is the young man's calling. _Even Lily, with her fondness for soaring off the swing, wasn't capable of altering reality so suddenly by complete accident._

_He must have had other outbursts like this, before, when he was younger. Was he seen? Did he block it all out?_

_If he's like me and Mother, what else can he do?_

Snape sets the cooling bulb on the top shelf, right between the dusty shoe boxes and closes that particular closet door. For now, it's no use wondering.

* * *

At six o'clock in the morning, as soon as his guest relocates to the bathroom, Snape quietly checks the room.

They don't talk about what happened. They have breakfast. And then they don't talk about it some more. Snape is getting rather good at maintaining the silent status quo. Harry seems not nearly foolish enough to tempt fate.

"Uh-oh, looks like the lamp needs fixing," Harry says while Snape does the dishes. "Do you want me to take a look?"

"No!" Snape stops him quickly. "I've got it." His mind searches quickly for something to distract his guest from poking around the house. "Actually, there is something you can do for me today."

"Whatever you need!"

"I need some books from the library. There is a list on the desk."

* * *

The next time Snape knocks on his mother's door, it's without Harry.

"Oh, it's you," Eileen says. Her cat slinks out - tail held high - through the cracked door, and winds its way, purring, around Snape's legs on the way past.

"Did you expect a client?"

"Not quite. Well, standing out here is about as much use as herding my cats. Come inside, sit down. It's not every week I get my son all to myself these days." She smirks. "What with that delicious young thing keeping you busy all day and all night."

"Mother."

"I know, I know. So how is that church-supplied chastity belt of yours? Must chafe _ever_ so much."

The banter is familiar in its annoyance. He allows it to continue, as she sweeps her trinkets off the kitchen table and lights a centerpiece candle.

"When did you first know," he grumbles, eyeing her over the pitcher of iced tea, "that I was different."

"Different how?" Eileen asks briskly, cutting the cards and pulling out one from the deck. She taps the back of it, laid out flat on the table. "You were a queer child all along, from your pointy head to your crooked little toes. You’ll have to be more specific. Which part?"

"Witchcraft," Snape growls the obvious.

"Ah." The tapping stops. "There's no such thing as 'witch' craft. Unless you need a perfect excuse to get together with the good ol' boys on a church night for a round of rape and pillage. As for your _magic_ ," She flips the card suddenly, glances at it and presents it to Snape with a smug smirk. _Magician._ Of course. "It hasn't bothered you this far, Severus. Why such sudden concern?"

Snape sets down his untouched tea. "The situation... changed," he admits, through thinned lips.

"How?" The smirk disappears off Eileen's face. "Has there been an accident?"

Snape doesn't know where to start. There has indeed been one, yes. Finding Harry has been one massive accident.

Eileen's eyes widen. "Were you seen?" she hisses, all her usual snide banter utterly gone.

"No. Well, not quite."

"This isn't a laughing matter, Severus. Spill it. Who saw you? Was it Harry?"

Snape shakes his head. "He knows nothing. However, this week, while we were alone, he made something disappear."

"My, my!" Eileen grins, humor returning in a rush of relief. "What got in his way first? Your clothes or your self-control?"

"My lamp," Snape snaps back at the insinuation. "A single lightbulb. Banished right out of the socket. Ended up hanging in my closet. No, not hanging, _floating. Still lit!_ "

"Is that all?" Eileen shrugs. "Lovely parlor trick. That scrawny tadpole might even have his mother’s Gift. He should have been taught control sooner. Properly. By someone who knows her way around."

"You will do no such thing. He does not even know _what_ he is."

"Then tell him!"

"No!"

" _Tell_ him, Severus! You owe him that much."

"He is under my care. I 'owe him' to keep him safe. Sometimes, it's best to keep things exactly as they are."

"Oh, keep on deluding yourself,” she waves a hand airily. “And best keep an eye on that closet of yours: it might fill up faster than you think."

 _About that..._ "I do need something, with your help."

"Oh?" she perks up. "How can I _possibly_ be of service to a priest?"

"Did you keep any of my notes?”

"Which ones?" Her smile widens. "The anatomical sketches or the angsty poetry?"

"All of them, Mother."

"But what will I have left to hang up on my fridge? Oh, very well. There might be a few boxes in the cellar."

She says goodbye smugly as Snape leaves that day, carrying her hoard of his childhood notes in his hands.

* * *

As soon as Harry's off on an errand in town, Snape sets to his work. The words Snape murmurs, freed off the musty pages and given life in his cottage, are not prayer. They are magic-dampening chants. With his carved walking cane that had seen plenty of morel hunts in spring, he marks a circle - deasil of course, never widdershins - around the couch that Harry claimed as his own personal space.

He purifies the center with sigils of protection traced in the air above the pillow. It's light magic, pristine as the pillowcase, chosen as carefully as Snape selects the Bible quotes to put up on the church board every weekend. Nothing intrusive, of course, nothing that would harm. With his own quiet desperation - as he hums the chants of his childhood - he continues his work: shielding his cottage from magical influence, shielding Harry from himself. His spine is straight, his steps firm, as if it's an ordinary task like sweeping the pews, not a complex bit of spellwork passed down through his mother's line and preserved for over three generations, prior to being rewritten by a twelve-year-old Snape with far too much time on his hands.

The task is anything but ordinary.

Solemnly, he screws the lightbulb back in. It shall glow bright when switched on, untouched by magic. Untampered. Resistant to banishing charms of any kind.

_Harry won't know a thing about his accident. Not if I can help it._

_He deserves a better fate than Lily's, or my own._

_He deserves a normal life. And that's the best gift I am capable of giving him._


	8. Acts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry takes things seriously.

_"Home is where the heart is. We found it one day in the sink. It hums things late at night, but they are not songs."_

_\- Welcome to Night Vale_

* * *

"Hermione? You around? Oh, hey!"

"Shh!"

"Oops, sorry," Harry whispers, "there you are."

Hermione is by the computers: dark, bushy hair in a silver-edged halo behind a greying computer tower. The tower has coiled its blackened, tentacled cords on the table between the usual pair of monitors and their keyboards.  Everything around the grimy box reeks of lemon and Lysol, but the old computer tower smells entirely too much of Arthur Weasley's garage: engine oil and mold.

Harry sneezes and Hermione stares at him forbiddingly. _Oops._ He covers his nose with his hand until it stops itching, and sidles over to hide with her behind the tall standing desks. The librarian, Miss Pince, is not someone you want to swoop down at you for making noise.

"Are you _sure_ you’re all right?" Hermione asks, her words accented by the even click-clack of her typing. "Ron said he hasn't heard from you for days! He's going nuts! When were you planning on talking to him?"

"I will, I promise!"

" _When_ , Harry?"

"Soon!" Harry needs to distract her from that line of questioning. "Hey, whatcha got here?"

"When is 'soon'?"

"This week. Er, tomorrow. Right away!"

"You'd better. You're just lucky he's not in here, again." She rolls her eyes. "D&D campaigns apparently take _time_ to plan."

Behind Hermione, on the right monitor, the usual white dots - stars - zoom by, futuristic and pixelated, but the left screen is now lit up with solid blue, brighter than an AOL CD, surrounding a grey box of text with three shiny-red block buttons.

Harry squints trying to read the yellow title on the left. The colors don't make it easy. _'Mandrake'? Cool!_ "Huh," he peers over Hermione's shoulder. "Doesn't look like any program I've… oh, Is that for Ron's stuff?"

  


"No, it's mine. Don't touch ANYTHING!" Hermione slaps his hand away from the nearest keyboard. "It's experimental. Very, _very_ new." Hermione taps something on the keyboard and the focus switches from the first red block 'Disk Druid' to the center one, which is just 'disk', misspelled with an extra 'f' beforehand, and then everything changes to a new screen, not so bright with lots more confusing lines.

 _Definitely not for D &D, _ Harry thinks. _But maybe it's some sort of role-playing game!_ Harry peers at the ancient looking box with text. _They could put in a bit more effort. All the boxes are so simple and the text is all garbled and there are only five colors._ "Um," he squints at it suspiciously. "Doesn't look new at all. Looks pretty old!"

Hermione rolls her eyes. "It's newer than new. Not even out until next month. At least not officially." Her face lights up as she confides: "It'll have the latest kernel by then. I'm interested in seeing how well it works on the older hardware." She punches in a rapid series of keys, navigating through the bright menus without touching either mice on the table. On the monitor, boxes and text change in flashy, cryptic ways and the grimy tower vibrates and hums along. The screen shows a flurry of words (like 'swap' and 'free space') and a lot of very random abbreviations along with some pretty big numbers.

 _What’s this supposed to be anyway? You can never tell with Hermione. A game inventory? A trajectory calculator for those flying stars on the other, the normal, screen? Sometimes geniuses get... well, pretty weird. Hermione'd better not turn out to be some secret hacker sending funds from that one dusty ATM by the bank into her super-secret Swiss account. Judging by those numbers, she'd be rich._ Harry squints at the rest of the title on top. Whatever it is below the title, makes Hermione bite her lip in indecision, and spurs a flurry of action from her fingertips on one of the keyboards. The inventory numbers next to mysterious 'swap' suddenly double to four digits.

"Er, so what does a mandrake actually have to do with red hats?" Harry asks, puzzled by the top sentence.

"Think of them as codenames." Hermione instructs. "Red Hat. Singular."

"Codenames. Got it. A _Linux_ Mandrake. Based on Red Hats. Hat." Harry scratches his head, completely lost. "How is this of _any_ use to a library?"

That brings out a geniune snort. "Oh it will be, trust me. Just wait until the stable version's out!"

"Riight. Stable version. Of course, now it _all_ makes sense." Harry suspects this sort of 'stable' has nothing to do with the horses at the Dursley farm, and like a proper farm kid nods along, tuning out the rest. There's no following Hermione's explanations when she gets like this.

"There'll be some changes to the f-disk configuration and the new modem drivers may still improve -" she glances at Harry and rolls her eyes. "Oh, why do I even bother? Honestly!" She shakes her head. "Don't just sit here and stare at my partition table. Did you need something?" Her key-tapping stops, now that whatever-it-is on the screen is content to carry on for awhile.

"Yeah. Actually. I've got all these to find." Harry unfolds Snape's handwritten list, and then peers past the monitor at the shelves in the library. _What kind of person reads so much in a week? Besides Hermione._ "Looks like I'll need to search the journals section too. Help?"

She glances at the list. "You'll need to check the latest. We haven't sorted them yet. This way."

They gather a sizeable stack of books, working together in companionable quiet broken only by the slow whisper of the overhead fan, before Harry actually lets out a question: something he wanted to ask all along and something so long and so complex, it can't possibly be understood by a computer. Not that asking Hermione is easy, exactly.

"So, um, theoretically speaking. There's this friend of mine -"

"Yes?"

"Not a 'friend' friend, just someone I know. From Brighton. My age. I don't think you've met."

"I see. And?"

"Well… as I was saying, anyway, he's got a thing. A serious thing. For someone a bit older - like you - and really, really smart. Also like you." Hermione's not even a year older than Harry, and scary smart, but in a different way than Snape, but hey, Harry needs all the leverage he can get.

"That's true," Hermione says, chin held high, "But you really don't need to flatter me." Her smile, slightly smug, says otherwise. "I'm already willingly going through all this trouble with the list of these… may I ask, why the sudden interest in theological and missionary research?"

"It's not for me, m'just picking it up." Harry brushes off that question as quickly as possible. "But look, I mean it. You are smart! That's not flattery, it's a fact. But anyway, the thing is... what that friend’s got going is serious, like I said and well, what I wanted to ask is, what can that friend - er, this guy I know, from Brighton, do to prove to that someone that he really is serious."

Hermione's eyes narrow. "Serious how, precisely?"

How indeed? Harry's at loss, only he knows that it's pretty damn enormous scale of seriousness here, heavier than all the books in the library. "Like... Serious serious! What would _you_ do?"

"Personally? That's irrelevant, since I'm not doing it. This friend, your age, you said? Hmm..."

She is silent for while.

"... Well?" Harry prompts, impatient.

"It all depends on the specific situation. I can't just hand out advice without knowledge of all the details. What if I'm wrong? Why is this friend asking you for help anyway?"

"Um," Harry sighs. "He hasn't exactly. I just… You know me. I'd like to help this guy out. It's only fair."

"Fair or not, this entire year my purpose in life as a part-time librarian seems to be all about helping clueless teenagers have informed sex," She sighs, rolling her eyes. "Honestly. We have books right here all about that, from A to Z, so why am I the only one who's ever checked them out?" Hermione waves her hand toward the section that always made Harry blush when he peeked at the covers and maybe even flipped through a book or three when the library was empty, but now he's kind of regretting not going over more of them. Strictly for research, of course. _What kind of sex is at the Zs anyway? I never got past the Os!_ "It's all right here," Hermione continues. "Check out a few! Give them to your friend to read. And, if he won't read, at least stay safe. And by 'safe' I do mean condoms."

 _Condoms. Right._ Harry tries to look relaxed, he really does. She pauses and stares at him, unimpressed.

"Oh for Margaret Sanger's sake, you must know what they are and how they work by now?"

Harry practically feels himself turning red but he has to chime in. "C'mon! I've helped you with all of your meetings back in school. How dumb do you think I am? - any of us are. I didn't really mean serious as in sex. I meant serious as in... well... "

_Serious like the deep, tolling music of a never-before heard sermon. Serious like "Your mother, she... left." spoken quietly by Severus over Mom's grave. Serious like a field of fireflies, shining under the infinite stars, like that moment in the car when his eyes held all the magic in the world, right when I was just about to kiss him, and then I did kiss him and he kissed me back..._

"... serious!"

Hermione shakes her head and blows a stray curl off her forehead with an upwards sigh, but her eyes are warm as she gathers more journals and stacks them on top of the already sizeable mountain of them. "I don't know what else to tell you, except this 'friend in Brighton' ought to be filling out another college application and looking at scholarships. As should you."

"Yeah, tell me something I _don't_ know." Harry sighs, trailing after her like a berated puppy back to the computers.

"I will, since it doesn't seem to stick. It's never too late to consider all the options! Don't underestimate community colleges for your first years of study. You can transfer after your Associate's degree is done. Keep your GPA at a reasonable level and communicate with your teachers and - Do you think you'll end up out of state? That will drastically affect the tuition."

Harry shakes his head. "I don't think it really matters, in the larger scheme of things." Like the entire world outside Snape's small cottage, and the entirely private universe of Harry and Severus inside together, behind the closed doors.

"Harry! It does matter! This is what's actually important in life! For anyone our age, and do tell your friend that, the focus should be on education first until we're at least twenty-five."

"Whoa, whoa! I _really_ don't want to plan out every single thing I'll be doing at twenty-five right this moment." _I don’t even know what I’ll be doing next Sunday! Well, except for one thing: listening to Severus' morning sermon, but then what?_ "I'm just saying. Isn't being spontaneous a part of the whole experience?"

"Being an adult and showing that you're invested in 'being serious' with someone is demonstrating the ability to plan for a future, a mutual future. As in, not just yours. For example, have you ever thought what your contributions to society would be after high school? This is the best time to start accomplishing something five years down the line! Right now. In this library! And for that you need to plan ahead."

"Hm." Harry sighs. "I guess you're right there. I'm not being serious enough." _Plans. College. Contributions. Sounds so boring and adult and sensible, even someone like Snape would find no reason to disagree._

Hermione sets the gathered stack of books down and pauses at the tentacled computer tower, making the red buttons inside the grey box on the blue screen do their magic, and sends some really weird text scrolling madly upwards. At one point, as she types something in, she looks gleeful, as if she just broke the entire internet by pressing an enter key to activate a shiny red button. Only she's Hermione, and she probably planned pressing the enter key over this particular shiny red button for at least a year.

"And Harry…"

"Yeah?"

"None of us should rush into a relationship straight out of high school like it's a D&D campaign."

"Um, I'll try." He doesn't want to lie to Hermione any more than he already has, and answering anything else would expose the 'friend in Brighton' for what it is. A cowardly way out.

_True paladins don't lie to friends. Not when it counts._

"I mean it. Good courtships, good books, good plans: they all take time."

 _'Courtship' sounds so weird, so old-fashioned, coming out of Hermione's mouth. Even if it's courtship with condoms._ Harry has to bite his cheek not to grin. _The word belongs in print of a Victorian novel, not said over computer desks filled with all of Hermione's weird high-tech gear with its green and orange blinking lights._

Trouble is, Harry can barely picture that with Severus: the courtship bits. It's not like Harry is some pining junior high girl, writing “Harry Snape” surrounded by hearts in the margins of his notebooks. It's not like two students making out on the back seat of the car on a prom night. (Not that Harry had much - or any - experience of dating either.) _How can I plan anything with him when I don't know what to do? What **can** I do? Invite him to a school game and then make out behind the bleachers? Give him my class ring? The whole idea is crazy! _

_… Would he even accept my ring?_

Hermione eyes Harry’s apprehensive expression and sighs. "Honestly, I know you're not in a hurry, but just consider checking out a couple more websites: there’s a campus or two in Springfield, and maybe a few on the East Coast. You may like them."

"Actually," Harry mumbles. "I'm thinking, what's the rush anyway? I'll stay on around town. Maybe wait a while. Er, like you said, consider all my options." _Just like an adult! Who can argue with that?_

"Right." Hermione says, tight-lipped. "You better not still be here taking part-time jobs at the diner when I come back to visit Mom and Dad over winter holidays! You need to do more with your education. You're a good student. Just apply yourself to whatever you’re most curious about. It's worth it."

 _It's more than just curiosity,_ Harry thinks. _Or has she realized by now that all those days Ron puts into planning these D &D campaigns are just so he can watch her play them out? _

* * *

Harry's carrying a stack of books back up the road, and just turns the corner when something traps his arm he is tugged off the path. He jumps, frazzled, and miraculously manages not to dump his entire library hoard onto his attacker.

Said attacker has beady black eyes, and a wiry gray head of hair, and the biggest black leather handbag Harry's seen in his life.

"My my. Jumpy thing, aren't you," says Eileen. "Just in time for lunch. You look like you could use some meat on your bones, and if Abe’s cooking won’t do that for you, nothing will."

"Lunch?" Harry blinks.

"Not in a hurry, are you?"

"Er," Harry says. "Um, yeah sure. Why not?"

Eileen grins like a cat that just ate the canary.

Some argue that the first watering hole in Pleasant Hope was a bar that used to stand where Dobby’s now is, back around the time of the Great Depression, but clearly, as Eileen informs Harry, all of these people are wet-behind-the-ears idiots, and all of them are wrong. The first bar in Pleasant Hope, as any true local will tell you, is Abe's Corner.

Abe's Corner existed even before the two roads which crossed to form that particular corner. It was likely there even before Pleasant Hope was named after any pleasantness or hope significant enough to commemorate. Even the bar's original atmosphere, crowded, dark, and intimate, had lasted decades as is: well-preserved, like a jar of hot pickle, not a day older than that particular sweltering summer day when a firm off-the-vine cucumber was washed, wiped, and thrust whole into a hot glass jar by a well-meaning housewife.

Harry gulps as that particular description spring from Eileen's lips.

"What?" She asks innocently. "Don't tell me you haven't eaten a cucumber fresh off the vine. So juicy! I'm sure Severus has ‘em springing up ripe and ready to taste, right behind that church of his."

It sounds like an insinuation of some sort. But it's probably just the way she laughs - a cackle here and there - makes everything she says sound odd and shifty. Harry tells himself he really shouldn't worry. After all, she's just an old lady. Snape's Mom. Old folks can get a bit odd, rambling on about things.

"So, who is your bright young friend over there in the library?"

"Hermione? Oh, we were in school together, she's helped me so much with math, you wouldn't believe. You should see her report cards. Mr. and Mrs. Granger must be so proud."

"Ahha. The dentist's daughter. I've seen too much of that Weasley boy around her. She’s far too smart for him, if you ask me!"

"Hey," Harry protests. "Ron has a great mind. He beats me at chess all the time."

Harry wonders if he's too young to be here. It is after all a bar, even if it's not even noon, so the place is pretty empty. He even expects to be asked to leave at the door but no one asks -- no one is even at the door. Apparently there's an advantage to being led around by an old lady with a no-nonsense stare.

The bar stools are tall and stiff, their seats wooden blocks carved with an imprint of a very bony butt. The barman, Abe, is as tough and leathery as the cranky-looking stuffed goat head over the shelves full of various bottles.

"Eileen," Abe nods to her and slides a single grubby sheet of paper - a list of bar snacks - toward Harry. "What’ll it be today?"

"I'll have The Toby, dear, - oh I do remember my dear deadbeat husband turning his nose up at it whenever I offered to share - and whatever my handsome young chaperone over here is hungry for out of your burnt offerings."

The Toby's not on the menu, but Abe clearly doesn't blink an eye at that. _It's probably a drink,_ Harry thinks, looking over the list of snacks… fries (regular, shoestring, curly or potato wedges), wings (ranch or hot), nachos, fried cheese sticks… His stomach growls.

Eileen's dish turns out to be the biggest sausage Harry's ever seen, a pair of eggs and a wad of extra dark brown curly fries, all topped by a hefty dollop of cream cheese sauce. It's something that would have brought out every inner twelve year old and made them point and giggle. Eileen takes her time to savor the sauce while Harry bites into a wing and takes a big slurp of coke.

"How is my son these days? Getting enough sleep?"

An odd thing to ask, but it's probably natural for a mom to worry. It's not as if Harry had much experience with parents to know. He blinks. "Um. I think so?" He thinks of Aunt Petunia fussing over his cousin. "He's usually up before I am." What would a mom want to know about her child? He volunteers: "He does eat breakfast every day."

"I'm certain Severus can feed himself by now. You on the other hand..." she laughs. "You've got bigger eyes at the sight of decent food than Count Furfur, when he was just a small stray kitten. Oh, don't forget to chew and swallow. Tsk, maybe by winter you'll learn to stop and savor your meals."

 _Strays or not, she seems like someone who knows what it's like to not have breakfasts, or dinners,_ Harry thinks. _We've got that in common._ And that makes even her creepy cackle seem almost friendly and less shifty.

"If it was up to me, I'd break you of that habit in days. Come stay if you want. For the weekend, for a month, more. Severus' old room should go to someone who'd appreciate it. Besides, I could use some company, and any reason to get Severus to drop by more often is a good thing." She stops and releases a worrying cough. "What with my health not being what it used to, maybe having someone to take care of the place and share all the juicy gossip with would do us both good."

The barman just rolls his eyes. "Watch out," he mutters to Harry. "She'll still be whining about her health at both of our funerals. Just between you and me, her own cooking’s the only thing bad enough to take her out.”

"Ha, you've never tried my canned peppers, have you, Abe?"

"Too attached to my liver for that. You'd get even a pepper pickled."

"You know it!"

It's only when they exit the bar into the summer sun, Eileen rests her long, wrinkled hand on Harry's shoulder.

"I reckon for a stray soul like you or me - or my son - a safe place is a rare thing. Not just a place to sleep, mind, but also somewhere you chose to rest your head. If you ever - ever need a break from the church dwelling and all that self-deluding Bible-thumping nonsense that comes with my son's territory, you're welcome at my place."

"Um," Harry says. "Thank you."

"For as long as you need. No questions asked, no Sunday sermons."

Harry smiles then. "I don't mind the sermons, not if they're his anyway. But thank you. I'll… I'll keep it in mind."

* * *

Snape suspects his mother takes a certain gleeful pleasure in naming her pets after a handful of Snape's acquaintances she's been allowed near over the years. With the rate it's gone on, Harry will soon be lending his name to some small stray, who would be let in to share Minnie's cat bed in the house come winter.

It takes Snape a while to procure the original Minerva's Missouri State University's direct phone number. The university switchboard sends him onto another department and they redirect him back, apologizing all along, and afterwards, disconnecting into a series of short beeps. On the second try, Snape is prepared, asking for her department's exact extension in case he won't be redirected properly.

Extensions are a slight annoyance, considering the old rotary-dial phone he has in the kitchen. He is never quite sure he managed to get through, until:

"Professor McGonagall speaking. If it's about the midterms..."

Snape gathers his breath. "Minerva, this is Severus Snape." It's been a while: will she even remember him? Will she be willing to help?

It's not quite as difficult as Snape thought to come up with mostly truth: I know a student. Local. He attends my sermons. What does one need to do to get into university?

"Funds?" He considers. "Er, yes, not an issue."

Snape has some savings, if need be. "So, how soon can he start? August?"

"This August? Severus! You must be joking. Even my spring semester classes are all booked. This student of yours should have really started looking last summer, not now!"

"Minerva, he's… a special case. I can vouch for him. He will be worth your time."

"Oh, very well, I'll speak with the Dean. What is his name? Well, you'd better hope he’s prepared his application along with his scores. The deadline is next month."

"Thank you. You won't regret it."

Snape is… surprised by the gesture. It's not often that an acquaintance comes through with a big favor.

On second thoughts, perhaps he should not be so surprised.

Her stoic figure was there for every protest over the years. She fought to keep the women's shelter in downtown Brighton open. She eyed Snape cautiously across the serving tables at the soup kitchen as they were both helping out. She smiled at him first as they sorted the donated piles of clothing and toiletries the following year. She urged her students to turn out for protests. Her no-nonsense approach to petition drives saved many a cause.

Minerva always had a soft spot for heroic causes. She'll come through.

* * *

Dinner that Thursday is a couple of frostbitten, questionable boxes of meatloaf-and-mashed potatoes. Snape plops his down, still steaming, on the kitchen counter and shakes his head at Harry's cheerful offer of TV and company.

"Oh, come on. It's not a proper TV dinner, 'til you have some actual TV on with it!" Harry grins and pats a narrow space beside him. At that, Snape feels a physical shiver rushing through his left thigh, as if it wasn't an empty couch cushion Harry's hand touched, but Snape's own knee.

Work has finally caught up with him. _I'm days behind,_ Snape reminds himself sternly, _and it will only get worse, what with a week of plans postponed, and several rushed sermons. I absolutely must keep it under control. I must..._

He can't look away from the welcoming sight of Harry on the couch, and takes a few steps closer. The couch is a relief for his sore back. Harry's grin is a relief for many other things.

"That's better," Harry nods and takes over the dusty control with multicolor buttons. The screen lights up. "Oh, cool!" he grins, flipping past the local news and the commercials alike. "Xena reruns. It's like Hercules, but better. Ron loves this show!"

Snape, preoccupied with dinner, peers at the screen, and nearly spits out his current mouthful. On it, a pretty woman with conspicuous cleavage and toned thighs all bared by minimal leather ‘armor’ drop-kicks a few goons. "Really? I cannot possibly imagine why any teenage boy would enjoy this," Snape snarks, dry as dust and disapproving as ever. The scene shifts to a cheering crowd of peasants who don’t look particularly Greco-Roman.

"Hey, it's not just Ron. Even Ginny - that's his little sister - last Halloween, she tried to dress up like this one sidekick, in that green - um," he gestures at his chest with an empty fork "- thingy. Her mom wouldn't let her go out like that obviously unless she had a turtleneck underneath and a sweater over it, but it was still cool. She still has an actual staff though, made it herself, could twirl it pretty well by spring, that last time they went mushroom hunting, she could definitely handle it and fight with it. Whacked Ron on the head. That was SO great!"

"Hmph," says Snape, who knows a thing or two about about choosing, caring for, wrapping, making, balancing, carrying, and wielding a staff, and knows precisely the value of remaining silent on the subject. "Have you spent much time with the Weasleys?"

"Here and there. Them and Mrs. Figg too. Some summers even, when Mr. Weasley could convince my uncle to let me off the farm for awhile. But Dudley didn't like me leaving any farm chores for too long, because that meant he had to finally pitch in."

On screen, a metal ring spins and bounces off the walls, the trees, and the occasional human head in a flurry of gravity-defying maneuvers. "Yeah!" Harry's eyes brighten following it like a cat after a bouncy toy. "That's the best part."

"How is this remotely educational or entertaining?" Snape frowns. It's inauthentic, needlessly violent, childish to the point of absurd drivel. Snape knows damn well he should be working. Instead, his TV emits a tooth-grinding scream: apparently some sort of war cry, and shortly after, he observes another enthusiastic, slapstick stabbing. Despite the ridiculous situation, he can't bring himself to get up. Harry's clearly more passionate about it than he is.

"Oh, it gets pretty meaningful, once you watch it from the start and into the second season. You see, Hercules had it all from the beginning, demigod super-strength, instant fame, everything. Xena's not a hero like that: she was a warlord, had to choose to do good for herself to make up for her past. That makes it so much more important!"

 _No wonder Harry's here with me instead of the Weasleys or Mrs. Figg,_ Snape thinks. _His poor taste in TV seems to extend to poor taste of all sorts, including the company he keeps._

The stabbing is interrupted by a commercial break. _Oh joy._

"But that's not even what's really cool," with TV on mute for the ads, Harry waves his hands trying to explain in a spirited manner. "You see, she spent all that time alone, didn't trust many people, but finally, after all this time, let herself have one real friend. And now that she has that friend, she'd do anything to protect her from getting hurt. But even though it's dangerous, they're both happy," Harry smiles. "That's really amazing."

Snape doesn't have much to say to that.

* * *

As a suitable punishment for succumbing to all manner of ill-advised distractions, Snape spends a good couple of hours down the church basement with his neglected accounts, and doesn’t make much headway.

At ten, Harry shuffles down the steps and pokes his head through the door of the small office. The door hinges squeak and settle. "Need help?" he offers. "It's getting late."

"No." Snape rubs his forehead trying to stave off a migraine. "Nothing you can do here."

"OK," Harry nods, and sidles through the doorway before Snape can shoo him out. He makes a nest, stretching out on a small bench in the corner. "Lemme know if I can help."

"You know, I'll probably be at it all night, you go on," Snape hints when the clock chimes 11:30. "You must be bored here."

"M'fine." Harry grins like a star-struck fool. "M'not bored at all. Look, I've got something to write on and something to write with."

For all his effort, Snape can’t chase him off until an idea strikes.

"No sense in us both losing sleep. In fact, take my bed tonight. Rest up. The couch can't be that comfortable."

"Oh," Harry looks like he is contemplating.

"No sense in us both burning the midnight oil. It's likely I won't be done until late into the morning. Go."

"Oh, all right." Harry tries to hide a tired yawn. "But you better promise me you'll come get your bed back once you're done. I want you to rest too."

"Go," Snape waves him off.

"Fine, but I'll check on you at one, and you better not still be here!"

"Good night, Harry."

"G'night."

Snape calls a halt around five, as the dawn breaks through the sliver of glass just under the low ceiling which can hardly be called a proper window. He walks back into the cottage in the dim grey light. Fog blankets the ground in dim swirls from the hills to the highway, and overhead, as the stars wink out, there's a shadow and the distant hoot of an owl. After all night with the books, his mind is muddled, his thoughts slow and tired. He goes straight for his bedroom, on autopilot.

Harry is a still, lightly snoring fixture in his bed, curled up on the side, and taking up barely a third of the space. His notebook is still with him, resting on the pillow, weighted down by a cheap pen with the Pleasant Hope Library logo.

Snape stays long enough to put the spiral bound notebook onto the dresser, pen now securely pinning the pages shut, and to lift a blanket over Harry. Morning hours do tend to get cold.

He glances back at the notebook. It's vitally important that whatever's inside must not be seen by anyone but its owner. ' _The anatomical sketches or the angsty poetry?_ ' he suddenly hears Mother's cackle as if she’s in the same room. An annoyed frown masks any flicker of hurt at the invasion of privacy. Harry's privacy will not be invaded - certainly not by him.

He releases a weary yawn and makes himself comfortable in the chair across from Harry's couch, catnapping for a couple hours until the sunlight truly reaches through the windows. _Just resting my eyes,_ he thinks. _An hour, at most..._

* * *

When Snape awakens, it's to bright sunlight and suspicious silence. He's covered by a blanket from the bedroom. The same blanket that he drew last night over Harry. Speaking of, the small cottage sounds far more empty than it should, with a guest. It's a disturbing find, so in less than five minutes Snape is fully dressed and striding outside with car keys in hand, when he spots a tell-tale figure crouched in the garden, past the peonies, over a strawberry patch.

_How did that grow here so quickly? I should have made Harry stay on the couch, within the dampening field's influence. Tonight, he'll have to sleep there.  Let's just hope there won't be any more manifestations in the meantime._

"Morning! Come here!" Harry turns, and grins, as victorious as ever. "Look at all this!" He holds up a cup of red berries beaming with pride, as if he'd tracked, fought, and wrestled each one down himself. "Want some?"

Even Harry's winning smile is smeared with red juice. It's no surprise if he's sampled more than he gathered. Strawberry season has never made Snape's mouth water like this before. His feet carry him forward into the sunlight.

His hand reaches for red as if it's forbidden fruit. The first taste of summer, brought on undoubtedly by Harry's magic, is sweet, small, and mouthwateringly fresh and fragrant; nothing like the huge tasteless ones from Walmart, mass-produced for crowded cities.

Here, there’s the fruit, the red vivid against the grass at their feet, the farmland stretching for miles around them, and in his garden the only two people are Harry and himself.

"Good, innit?" Harry beams. "Weird, I never noticed it before. Your garden's got just enough sun right here. Perfect place for a strawberry patch."

With a sun-warmed burst of flavor on his tongue, with the endless blue sky overhead, everything suddenly seems so sunny and simple. Could this sudden lightness of heart also be Harry's unassuming, unintended magic? Snape hides his smile by popping the last few strawberries into his mouth, and glances at Harry's other hand. Perhaps he's gathered more.

"Um," Harry's free hand is closed around something, something small. "Actually…" he looks far too nervous for a bright summer morning, "This is also for you. If you want."

Harry opens his palm, and for a second, just a second, Snape thinks the flash of red is another strawberry with a bronze leaf crown, until his fingers grasp something hard and round and metal. Only then does he break away from Harry's searching, worried stare, and truly look down.

The ring still has the heat of Harry's palm. Gold and red, brass and glass, massive as far as rings go, and about as crude and gaudy as it gets.

"Harry?" Snape ducks the issue just a little longer, and husks out the completely unnecessary question: "What's this?"

"My senior class ring." For once, Harry's expression isn’t bright, unlike his gift. His gaze is serious, even mortified, his eyes dark against an unusual pallor. His hair bristles in the light. "I really shouldn't've spent the money but everyone else was getting them, and I never went to prom, so I could afford it."

 _This is utterly inappropriate for me to even consider..._ The mere mention of all those school experiences and school belongings Harry had or did not have in his young student life should have made him drop the suspicious find back on Harry's hand and put as much distance between them as humanly possible, but to his own surprise Snape still holds onto the trinket as if it's ‘more precious than rubies’, and the entire world shifts around the core of his wholly shocked conscience, round and round like a carousel at the country fair, until the only thing left clear is Harry's wide, trusting stare - dark green and bristly as a strawberry leaf - and the weight of that proverbial brass ring, already in Snape’s grasp.

He looks at it. A roguish pirate is stamped on one side and a lion on the other. Harry’s name and the name of the high school are in bold capitals around the giant red rhinestone. The stone is not heart-shaped, but it might as well be: the intention behind the gesture is that obvious. Snape lifts it past Harry's strawberry-stained palm and examines it. It looks so innocent in his hand, brash and shiny and impossible to hide for what it is.

_A token of a schoolboy crush. This is all it can be. This is all it should ever be._

"It's for you," Harry murmurs. "Not to wear, or anything like that: you don't even have to look at it all that much. I just want you to have it," he continues, confirming Snape's every worst fear, as well as his best treasured dream in one breath.

Harry's hand covers Snape's, closing Snape's fingers over the ring under the weight of Harry's palm.

"If you want, it's yours. For good luck."

* * *

"I can't accept it." Snape forces himself to look up, face that deeply hurt stare. "I wish I could but I can't."

"Why not?"

They are inside. Snape's mug of morning coffee cools, forgotten, on the kitchen table. Beside it, Harry's ring is a tell-tale spark of kryptonite. It feels wrong to have it. But now that he touched it, it is impossible to let go of it.

Snape draws a breath, his fingers steepled over his face, to deter any urge to pick it up again. "You must see how inappropriate it would be of me to keep something so significant of yours in my possession."

"It's not like that." Harry shakes his head. "Well, OK, maybe it is like that. But listen, if you're staying here for the rest of your life, and even if I end up somewhere far away - in college or in Canada - and never come back, if we never see each other after today and if I never even kissed you - I'd _still_ want you to have something of mine, and this is the only thing of value I have. There isn't anyone else in the entire world I'd rather have it. So take it, please. No strings attached. It's mine and I want you to have it as a gift. That’s all."

Snape is about to say he'd hold onto it for the time being - with the idea of returning it to its rightful owner the first chance he gets - when Harry freezes in the middle of the kitchen and stares at him in that mortified, meaningful way.

"I need to tell you something else and you're not making it easy at all! Please, just take it!"

Gifts are never simple. And with this particular gift, Snape's stomach has a sinking, suspicious feeling. His hand slides to cover the bright trinket. "What else were you planning on telling me?"

"It's been more than two weeks since I've stayed here. I was thinking…"

"Yes?" Snape bites back the instant, instinctive chill. _Maybe he’s just going to offer to pay rent again, stubborn idiot that he is._

"I really can't impose anymore, and I'd like to find something permanent in the area, so - um, I was looking for a place to stay, and your house really isn’t a place for guests, but I think I found someone - it's the perfect solution."

 _Harry’s found someone. Not something - some_ **_one_ ** _-_ tolls through Snape's mind. _I should have known! Who’d ever bother sticking around here, around me!_

_I just didn't think it would happen so soon._

"Who?" he asks. Quiet. Deadly.

Harry's startled into panicked chatter: "Well, first I was thinking I'd crash at Ron's like I used to, but his brothers are all in town for the summer. And there's really no space, even at the barn. Charlie's there with all those stallions of his. But then, yesterday, your mom was uptown and she wouldn't mind someone staying with her. It's no bother. Your room’s empty."

Snape’s heart thuds once, _hard_ . His throat tightens in a way it hasn’t in many years. ‘ _She wouldn’t mind’. Of fucking course she wouldn’t!_

"Truth is... OK. Wow, how do I say this? I think we’re rushing into things a bit and it's all my fault. Because I really, really don't want to rush something so important. So I was thinking, I'll find a place close by, and find something to keep me busy, I see you whenever you’d like company, and we’ll take this slow. The proper way things are done. Maybe go see a movie at that old drive-in in Brighton next month. Or check out the fair up in Springfield, and the museums. Spend some time together. Learn a bit about what we both like. And by winter, well, we'll see where we end up."

Harry keeps nattering on and on, but it's nothing but white noise, buried in the rush of blood in Snape’s ears. _I can’t let her have him! I can’t run that risk! I can’t let her sink her claws into another magical protege, turn him loose on all her books, her scrolls, and her sigils!_ His mind reels from the image of Harry taking the first peek into the Clavicula Salomonis in the cellar, studying Snape’s own childhood notes on the margins of Ars Goetia, or worse yet: Harry drawing his first summoning sigil in his own blood, and not even properly disinfecting the athame beforehand, not bothering to put up a proper protection circle, and shouting out whichever name in the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum seems the coolest! _She'll show him everything she’s managed to get her hands on without any restraint, any consideration for what he truly needs. Just like she did with me._

_Not on my watch! If Harry ever has to find out what he's really capable of, it will be under my supervision. He won’t find out like I did. I won’t let him._

Snape’s fingers close around the ring, chunky and warm and still sticky with strawberry juice. He lifts it reverently and slides it into his pocket as he rises.

"Don't go," he husks, startling Harry into silence and a wide-eyed, searching stare. "I don't want you to leave," Snape speaks the simple truth and lets it hang in the air between them. "My offer to let you stay did not come with an expiration date." _Please,_ he thinks. _Believe me. Let it be enough._ "You have nothing to prove to me by leaving."

He takes a small step forward. Rests his hands on Harry's shoulders. Meets that irresistible stare and almost drowns, as he leans forward and just touches his lips, briefly, chastely, to Harry's forehead. "Regardless of what you choose, thank you for your gift."

He pauses, breathes an admission. A statement of fact. "It's wanted."

Harry's arms slide around him and he stays still, holding on, for a long, long time. His face is pressed against Snape's chest so hard that Snape can feel the smile against his shoulder, and then a murmur. "Like I said, for good luck."

* * *

Harry does sleep on the couch that night. Snape checks on him and feels the faint pull of his own enchantment working. Taking hold. Sinking deep. Saving Harry from himself.

_It should stop him from making any magical outbursts tomorrow. And the next night, and the next. I'll make sure he spends as long as necessary within the dampening circle. Just like delivering a long-lasting dose of medicine._

Before he sleeps, Snape stares at Harry's ring, as it rests red and heavy between his fingers before he sets it on his nightstand.

It takes him a while to fall asleep, and when he does, his dreams are full of rusting hulks and unpleasant reminiscences.

No more unintended strawberries sprout overnight.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   * The 'brighter-than-AOL-CD' / 'Microsoft-screen-of-death' blue install screen belongs to [Mandrake Linux 2.1 (Venice)](https://old-linux.com/), the 'stable' version was released around Harry's upcoming birthday in 1998, and is still bootable today in qemu, or any other virtual machine manager. Hermione must've researched just the right usenet threads to find it ahead of the official release date. 
> 

>   * As of today, [Missouri is among 26 states that require abstinence to be stressed in sex education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_education_in_the_United_States#Abstinence_education) and one of the 37 states that provide abstinence education. Present day Hermiones would be working over time to stock the bookshelves to compensate. [Margaret Sanger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger) (and Hermione, and Eileen) greatly disapprove. 
> 

>   * '[The Toby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_cuisine#Slinger)' is an actual diner food variety among the greater St. Louis (MO) area cuisine. Abe puts his own spin on it with curly fries instead of hash browns: or whatever other brown hairy bits were left in the bottom of the fryer that day. 
> 

>   * Harry's senior class ring is actually [something you can design](http://www.jostens.com/apps/store/productBrowse/1060143/Pleasant-Hope-High-School/Class-Jewelry/2006071011045564036/CATALOG_JRD/) online, along with the class keys (pendants), the yearbooks, and all manner of highly-priced paraphernalia. The strawberry-red 'ruby' suggested by the catalog for July was the color Harry liked best. The Pirate is the Pleasant Hope High School mascot. Leo is a constellation Harry wants to see better in the night skies some day. The ring (which would have cost around $100 during his senior year) is the most expensive thing Harry has ever owned. Snape would rather die than either a) be seen wearing such a hideously gaudy bauble, or b) lose it. 
> 

>   * The ring is a remembrance token and, as Harry eloquently stated, 'for luck'. That said, [the legal concept of same-sex marriages in Missouri was contested all the way until last summer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Missouri#U.S._Supreme_Court_decision) and was actively opposed by members of the clergy and conservative politicians with religious ties. In this particular AU in the late 90s, the concept simply did not exist: so Harry would think of his best case scenario, twenty or so years down the line, as not marrying at all. The [Defense of Marriage Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Marriage_Act) was enacted and would have went into the effect after his sophomore year: section 3 of DOMA would be struck down seventeen years later, about a month before Harry's 33rd birthday. At the time and the place of this story, the only way Harry may have heard of this at all is from someone like Hermione who'd paid attention to the 'adult' federal news. 
> 

>   * In the meantime, Harry is a neutral good human paladin in Ron's D &D campaigns. Hermione is a lawful good gender-ambiguous wizard. They are playing the first edition passed down from Ron's older brother Bill: the same 'controversial' original which caused moral panic over 'occult' and 'satanism' back in their childhood. The alliance of their party is, predictably, good.  
>    
> 
>   * Pastor Snape's denomination is deliberately unstated and irrelevant. The variety of denominations of every church (also irrelevant, in the larger scheme of things) found on the map of current day Pleasant Hope, Missouri, collectively oppose same-sex marriage up to this day, some more than others.  
>    
> 
>   * Eileen wishes to point out that [Pseudomonarchia Daemonium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomonarchia_Daemonum) contains exactly 69 demonic names, including Count [Furfur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furfur). Don't try it at home, kids. Try it in her cellar instead. 
> 



	9. Revelation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Snape cleans up.

 

_It's not darkest before the dawn. It's actually darkest after all the stars have gone out. It's_ _**very** _ _dark then._

_\- Welcome to Night Vale_

* * *

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," Snape reads to the small crowd in his church.

The stained glass window tops blush orange with the morning sunlight and paint the crowds in a cheery explosion of bright reds and purples.

Throughout the sermon, Harry is a constant presence, smiling up at him from the corner pew. It's odd how easy it is for Snape to grow used to that presence, as if Harry had been here all along, for every sermon of Snape's life. As if Harry's presence had brightened his wintry afternoons, in an icy church silent and lonely as a fallen icicle in the windswept white plain. As if Harry had kept him company during the rainy mornings, as Snape swept the caked mud down the steps and tucked the psalm books down the backs of the pews. As if Harry had been there watching Snape from a pew, from the very first time Snape ever spoke of absolution to the crowd.

Today, Snape's church is relatively full. His audience is intent, and there's even a few strangers among the old, familiar faces. Snape notes the newcomers. A pair of visitors to the Lovegood's farm, judging by the ragged tie-dye tops and the ribbons. A large, rangy man with long, matted hair, hovering behind the Dursleys. He looks shabby enough that he might ask for a handout afterwards, but as it turns out, he doesn't stay long enough for Snape to offer.

_Almost all the regulars are here. And Mother's nowhere in sight. Too far away to stir up trouble._

Snape breathes out a sigh of relief.

_All is well._

* * *

The heat lifts.

In the evening, Snape thinks back to one of his few good childhood memories and cooks one of Mother's stews for a late supper. It's a foolish idea, following this recipe of hers to the letter: tossing a pinch of salt over his left shoulder and none into the pot, measuring the fresh peppercorns out of the jar by multiples of seven followed by three large bay leaves, stirring "thirteen times widdershins with your eyes closed tight, then crack an egg into the pot with a single tap of your left hand alone." And yet, Snape lifts up the cracked egg shells in his palm and spares their insides a glance. _Watch out for bad omens, Severus, or you'll need to start the stew again from scratch._ The inside of the egg shells is pristine, and the egg whites spin harmlessly in a cloudy spiral, the yolk split and buried deep beneath them in the pot. The stew exhales fragrant steam, coming to a roiling boil. The broth is ready for the meat to be added.

A new small weight in Snape's right pocket is no heavier than a large marble. He feels the ring's glassy edge, the metallic ridges of it when he moves around the kitchen, as he peels the vegetables and slices the meat. The countertop C.B. radio hums periodically, breaking his reverie, and Harry's ring clicks now and then, presses into his side, tapping out its own tune to dance to.

"Sooo, TV?" Harry asks hopefully, poking his head into a room rapidly filling with the tantalizing aromas of cooking meat and onions.

Snape thinks back on Harry's previous choice of TV shows, and doesn't feel all that eager to repeat the experience. "Kitchen," he counter-offers. "We can talk here."

An old-fashioned meal deserves an old-fashioned setting. Outside, the cicadas sing in the bushes. A late bird calls in the distance. It's a beautiful night.

"Why not?" Harry shrugs, and rushes to lay out two place settings at the kitchen table, arranging a pair of Snape's good spoons just right on the worn tabletop. "Smells so good! Unbelievable. What's in it?"

"It's my mother's recipe," Snape warns, ladling out the first portions, "so you don't want to know."

"Ooo, scary!" Harry snorts, and predictably lifts the first spoonful, lips pursed over a fragrant piece of carrot and a tender-pink strip of beef sliced so hair-fine it breaks up in the spoon before even making it to Harry's mouth. "Stew Surprise! Mmm. Even better."

Snape's hands are steepled together over his plate, but not in prayer, as he covertly observes Harry's unabashed noises of enjoyment, instinctive thanks for this shared meal. "How is that possibly better?" he grumbles, to hide his own grin at Harry's delighted slurping of a twenty-four ingredient stew measured, sliced, and added to the pot in precise order and fashion. He can't remember when he's ever had such an appreciative consumer for his cooking.

"It's a good surprise. See, I trust you." Harry shrugs, his glasses steaming up as he leans over the bowl. "And your mom too. And I liked watching you cook. That makes it extra good."

"Flatterer." Snape gives up the subterfuge and smirks openly, tasting his own creation and admitting it's acceptable enough.

"So. How'd you end up a preacher here anyway?"

_How indeed._ "The usual way. Seminary school. How better to dash Mother's dreams of a vagabond son?"

"Why seminary? I mean, instead of college, or university… There are plenty of places to choose from: community college, in-state, out of state," Harry lists patiently, as if reading from a high school counselor's brochure.

_He's considered college,_ Snape realizes. _Good. That scholarly streak must be fed, but surely it can be encouraged by something other than_ _ **my**_ _poor life experiences. None of which are an appropriate example for a budding scholar. More importantly, none of them are_ _ **ready**_ _to be shared, or will ever be._

"... ever thought about being a chef?" Harry teases, in an unexpected turn of conversation.

"No. Actually, I wanted to work for the railroad when I was young," Snape reveals, not to be one-upped. It's a small confession, not nearly enough to uncover every hope and dream of a seven-year-old innocent, concentrating on the sound of a passing train to distract himself from the screams of yet another fight drowning out the inane background of TV chatter. At least for a few moments, the train's lorn and warning whistle somehow took his mind off all his closer woes.

"What, seriously?" Harry snorts into his plate, then grins. "You? Sorry, just, can't really picture you with a sledgehammer on one shoulder and a railroad tie on the other. A conductor's uniform though..."

"The pay's reasonable, and there's plenty of opportunity for travel." A practical choice for a boy growing up in a trailer park, one that would have carried him far away from Pleasant Hope to another life.

They finish dinner and Harry stacks the plates, carrying them to the draining board. When Snape follows him over to the sink, Harry protests, "I'll wash! You did all the cooking! And look, you're about out of dish soap anyway. Got any more?"

"There's some at the church." Snape used to do more dishwashing there in the basement sink after church dinners than he ever did here in the cottage kitchen. Harry has changed all that.

"Hang on, I'll get it." With a flurry of motion, and a cotton towel still tucked over the front of his jeans, Harry sweeps past him. As he brushes past Severus, he pauses briefly and flicks the towel teasingly at him, "Don't start without me!"

Severus snorts amusement and feels excitement bubbling up, when it really shouldn't be. But it is. _As if the dessert is yet to come._

Snape rinses the worst of the loose scraps off the dishes, then wipes the tabletop. He folds the dishrag neatly, setting it on the counter top. A while later, the cast iron stew pot is scrubbed clean, rinsed with boiling water, seasoned with fresh lard, and put away.

_What's taking him so long? The soap's the first thing you see when you open the cupboard._

But apparently Harry hasn't found it yet.

Snape stands at the open door and calls out into the night. "Harry?"

It's quiet: the yard, the church.

It's also dark. Far too dark. The porch light should be on. It's not.

Snape walks out onto the porch and listens. The nighttime hush grows deafening, and the sickening sense of _wrong_ intensifies as he stalks silently down the porch stairs.

In the triangular slash of cornfield that Snape can see, burnt yellow by the light from the open door behind him, there's a dark line of disturbed growth, as if someone has walked through it. It wasn't there before.

Snape does lock the church doors overnight, but the decorative old lock that the traditionalists among his congregation like the look of so much, is far too easy to pick. So he isn't enough of a fool to leave anything of value in the main building. His own cottage, of course, is a separate building with much better maintained locks, both modern and magical.

"Harry?"

No answer. Then, a muffled yell in the distance, for all its quiet far more startling to Snape than the most piercing train whistle.

Jolting instantly into a sprint, Snape hurls himself at the church door. It bursts wide under his weight, far too easily: already opened.

"STOP! Not one more fuckin' step!"

It's a threatening growl forced past the bared teeth of the intruder. Harry's struggling futilely in the man's clutches, held in a brutally efficient headlock; the mugger seems twice the boy's size in the gloom.

Snape skids to a halt; his eyes adjust to the dimness and he recognizes the ragged stranger from congregation this morning. _Drifter. Nothing much to lose and that makes him dangerous._ Harry's eyes are wide, and he's silenced by a large hand with long nails clamped over his mouth and nose. With a sickening wrench of guilt Snape realizes, _Harry's helpless! Because_ _ **I**_ _crippled his magic!_

"Hah, preacher! Just the guy I wanna see. Getcha skinny ass over there," a nod toward the altar, "or wherever ya stash all that collection plate cash an' shit. Oh yeah, an' gimme alla them silver'n'gold crosses'n'whatever, alla that churchy bling ya keep locked up for special."

The "Ha!" that last demand wrings out of Snape is pure bitter reflex; the intruder startles and Snape waves his hands at the bare clapboard walls. "Does _this_ look like the sort of place with a secret cellar full of jewels and golden crucifixes?" The mugger's sweaty face twists and Snape adds in a rush, "Listen, we don't have anything much, the collection was banked today, but put the boy down and come with me and…"

"BULLSHIT!" the intruder snarls. "Shut the FUCK UP! I ain't goin' NOwhere with you an' I don't want no more o' your shit. You gimme ALLA your money NOW. RIGHT NOW, y'hear me? Or I'll blow 'im away." The arm not holding Harry in the headlock moves just enough to show the dull glint of gunmetal by Harry's ear, shaking badly with the jitters of nerves or who-knows-what mixture of drugs. The click of the hammer cocking is loud in the silence.

_That crazy fucker'll KILL HIM and IT'S ALL MY FAULT!_

And with that, the constant flow of Snape's detached, didactic thought _stops_. Amputated as if by the headsman's axe. Obliterated in an instant by a towering black tsunami of unstoppable killing rage.

**NO!**

Perhaps he screams that soul-deep denial aloud. Perhaps that roar sounds only in his mind, or perhaps it echoes only in his magic, as it seizes the man in vast, invisible claws, rips him instantly far away from Harry and right off the ground, holds him spreadeagled high in the air, suspended for an endless moment like a trophy, like a twisted parody of the crucifix at the far end of the hall. Or perhaps the only sound is the wet splatter of a body literally being torn to shreds, a throat rent in two before it finishes drawing breath to scream, the dull, meaty thuds of limbs hitting the floor, and the hollow roll of a shaggy head, coming to rest by Snape's boot.

Silence, then. Silence, and the sound of Snape panting, perhaps with adrenalin overload, perhaps with less innocent exultation.

Amid the chaos, Harry is also silent. Standing. Staring, pale-faced. His eyes are so green, so naked: his glasses are gone, lost somewhere in the struggle.

Looking at it all.

Seeing, at last, what Snape is truly capable of.

Witnessing a murder.

_Finally, he knows what I am. A monster._

The sparse, orderly space of the church looks nightmarish, unreal, like something out of a late-night horror movie. Blood sprays crisscross the white ceiling and walls. A dark puddle spreads wider and wider on the floor, and the stink of gore and worse hangs sickeningly heavy.

"Did he hurt you?" Snape rasps. He can't bring himself to touch Harry. Not now.

"No," Harry croaks, and then, "You?" He steps toward Snape, arms lifting as if trying to shield him from the sight of the massacre. His hands fumble over Snape's shoulders, his chest, checking for physical wounds. "What, what _was_ that?"

"Me." Snape breathes, stepping back. " _All_ me. Go inside, Harry. The cottage. Now!"

"Wait. You've got people coming in the morning. They can't see," - Harry motions with a cringe - " _that_. We've got to clean up - get the blood out - from everything, and the smell… there's not enough time!"

_He wants to help me,_ Snape blinks, dazed by the very idea _. After everything he just saw. He_ _ **still**_ _wants to help. Me!_

"Don't touch anything. Especially not the gun. Or me. Don't get any more blood on you." _He can't be connected to this!_

Snape, ever the pastor in charge of his domain, snaps into a familiar routine. He remembers how to clean this space and make it presentable for visitors. He's cleaned so many times before: sweeping the aisles free of dust and confetti, washing dishes after church dinners, all with measured grace and somberness and sobriety.

Not anymore. Now, he works rushed and ruthless: banishing every last scrap of scattered flesh and bone, including a dismembered hand and the gun it still clutches. Then he paces the aisle methodically, banishing every last drop of blood and other bodily fluids from ceiling and walls and floor, right down to stray hairs and greasy fingermarks and dirty bootprints. Until nothing remains but a vague reek, and even that is dismissed with a wave of one hand that coaxes a waft of night breeze through the still-open church door.

The floor is as pristine as if he'd just gone over it with a broom after a spring wedding, sweeping out the rice and the confetti to the celebratory chatter outside. It smells of nothing worse than wet earth, though the last summer storm blew through these parts weeks ago.

All is clean, as if a body wasn't just reaped down and sown six feet under to join another man: a stranger's remains gone forever, to mingle with the bones of Snape's childhood monster.

But Snape was alone that first time. Not now.

Harry's still there. Watching him with wide eyes.

"It's done." Snape says, to himself as much as Harry. "It's over."

Drained of all energy, Snape surveys a familiar scene. The church is quiet, still, and almost, almost a holy place. Just like any other night.

There's just one thing left that's out of place. Harry's glasses glisten on the floor by a pew. Snape bends to pick them up gently and mutely holds them out. A hand wraps around his, and both of them are holding on, holding onto each other.

"Come on," Harry says softly. His voice cracks, "Let's go home."

* * *

They're in Snape's room. Harry once slept, alone, in this bed. Snape closes this door every night, leaving Harry on the couch in the living room. Now the door is open and they're both on this side of it, actually in the room at the same time, and Harry can't bring himself to leave Snape alone in this room or any other.

Not after what happened today.

Snape did the unthinkable to save Harry's life. He killed a man in his own church. And then he had enough composure to clean it all up, to wipe out every trace. All of it should have been impossible. To wield a power not of this world. But he not only did the impossible, he made it look as easy as doing the dishes.

_As if it's just one more cleanup_ , a thought dawns, numb as the afterword. _Just another chore._

But Snape's gaze on him is seeking, and even kind. It's not the stare of a calculating murderer. _He's tired. He's been through so much today, enough for a year!_ _He definitely needs help,_ Harry realizes. _He needs my help._

Harry reaches out, turns Snape's hands over, and Snape lets him. They're the same hands Harry's seen so many times before. Warm. Human. The bony knuckles are clean, the long, thin fingers are clean. Not a trace of blood anywhere.

"Thank you." Harry murmurs, "I don't know what would've happened if you weren't there, and you just… handled it." _Like some superhero swooping in and taking out the bad guy._

"That... wasn't the first time," Snape confesses, abrupt and toneless. "It was years ago. I was even younger than you. I had no idea what I was doing. None." The finest possible tremor starts in Snape's fingers: if Harry hadn't been holding his hands, he never would have noticed.

"That first time, did they deserve it then too?"

Snape drops his gaze, swallows, finally nods.

"How did you _do_ that? You... and me. ...I, it's just, all these _things_ keep happening around us! Is it 'cause of…?" Harry's gaze flicks in the direction of the church and he falters into silence.

That small church with its crucifix on the wall is the only explanation most everyone else in town seems to need. But Harry feels a sudden surge of doubt. He was brutally attacked inside it, was about to have his brains blown out inside it, and has watched it bloodied over and blown clean by a morbid miracle he knows damn well he never thought to pray for.

Snape sighs and lowers his head until his hair shrouds his face. "It's got nothing to do with God." he intones slowly, "Or the devil. Witchcraft is merely a part of nature. My nature."

Harry thinks of the documentaries on TV about the oddities of nature, the ones about the electric eels and the squids changing color, and the poisonous frogs. Those TV shows never had anything like what Snape did in them.

_Witchcraft's for Halloween and bad horror movies._

"Witchcraft," he repeats after Snape. "You're not like any preacher I ever heard of, you know that? I mean, it's not bad. It's not! But, you are. I'm just saying, you're not like anyone else I've ever met. I should be angry at you."

"Harry, it's..."

"You know why? You almost made me _believe_ in something so huge! But God doesn't even matter, not when it comes to you saving me! Yes, it's a miracle, and _you_ did it all by yourself! But did you ever even drop any hints about that in your sermons? That people can do miracles, all on their _own?_ "

"It's complicated," Snape interrupts. "But I mean what I say to my congregation. Every word."

"Then how can you quote the Bible in the morning, and that night wave your hand and make a bad guy disappear?"

"Because it's my responsibility. All of it. All of this. To keep the people of this town focused, to keep them safe. It's all I can do now. I don't need a cross on the wall, to tell me what I have to do for the rest of my life, to atone for what I am. I _know!_ "

"Atone?" Harry latches onto that one word, one argument he can make. "So what you're saying is, you're just… like the rest of us?"

"Not like the rest. No. Harry, what I am is..." Snape's face twists, Adam's apple working as if he's fighting not to be sick.

"I like you just the way you are!" Harry cries, loud in the evening hush. Needing to do something to counteract Snape's sudden wrench of self-disgust. "I trust you! Is that stupid of me? I don't think so!"

A clock in the living room chimes midnight. _Already?_ Harry can't bring himself to move away. He's still lightheaded and jittery, his whole body a bundle of scraped-raw nerves in the aftermath of adrenalin rush.

Snape may be feeling similar restlessness: he prowls over to the corner bookshelf, scooping up a whisky bottle and a shot glass, pouring until the glass is brim full. His hands are not as perfectly rock steady as Harry's always seen them before.

Snape flicks a glance over at Harry, unsure, almost apologetic, but Harry shakes his head at the silent offer in the lifted brow and the tilted bottle. _It's not the time to experiment with drinking tonight. Someone's got to keep an eye on him._

Snape knocks back the shot in his hand, and immediately pours himself another, pacing all the while. He doesn't talk, but he does push aside something odd as he sets the bottle back on the shelf. It's a deck of cards, but they're larger than the usual playing cards. Much more colorful, too: the top card's facing up and there's a full-color picture on it, not the usual stylized court card.

Curious, Harry comes over for a closer look. The picture is of a man with an eight on its side over his head and a table full of alchemist's gadgets. There's a number 1 on the top edge and a label on the bottom edge that reads: "The Magician."

"What's this?"

Snape's lips thin in an unimpressed grimace. "One of Mother's tarot decks. She does like to leave me her little reminders. It stopped being funny long ago."

Harry's picks up the card and lets his fingers run over it: feeling the golden grooves of the infinity halo and the drop of gold flame on the double-sided candle in the magician's hand. "So. Does this run in your family? Is your mom like you, a…"

There's a flash of something vulnerable in Snape's dark eyes, just for a second: as if he expects Harry to pry after something damning, something hurtful.

"She tells actual futures, doesn't she? With those cards."

Snape gives one of those dry huffs that, from him, signal amusement. The gaunt lines of his face relax, just a little, and he takes another sip of whisky. "She's not as skilled at fortune-telling as she likes to think." Snape reaches his free hand out to cover the deck, taps the altar with its miniature cup. The image is so detailed, it must've been painted with a single hair. "She drew this card to symbolize me, when she visited last. But if she truly knew me, she would have drawn a different one."

He scoops up the deck and shuffles the cards as deftly as if he's done it a million times, and come to think of it, he probably has. He closes his eyes as he draws a card, as if he's concentrating, before he flips the card over. It's a skeleton on a white horse. Death.

Harry frowns, staring at the silent scream of the skeletal face, at the field of body parts and the rolling head by the horse's back hooves. "That's not who you are," he cries, "It's _not!_ "

Snape just shakes his head and turns away, draining his glass and setting it down. "I don't know how to be anything _else_."

Harry collects the remaining cards, and he doesn't know yet what he's looking for: anything, anything but that. He shuffles the cards clumsily, mainly trying to hide that horrible Death card back inside the deck and bury it beneath all the others.

_Where's that Magician when you need it? Quick!_ A couple of cards slip out between his fumbling fingers and fall onto the table before he can draw anything else.

One card shows a single golden cup. And the other card is so obvious, even Harry can see what those two people are symbolizing without having to read the label. _Whoa, that's a very naked and very happy card and are they..._

Harry looks away. Blushes. "Here, take 'em. I'm crap at cards, even card tricks. But even I know you're anything but Death. You're not Death to me, you're the opposite! You're Life! And so much more! You're everything else in this deck and a gazillion other decks put together! So don't you dare give up now. Not when you just saved me!"

* * *

Harry may have been saved this time, but Snape is tired of resisting. This is it, the end for him, anyway. He cannot begin atoning for everything he's done, so he gives in and lets the guilt roll over him, like a crushing wave, burying him in cold salt, dragging him under to drown.

Beneath all that storm, it's quiet; calm as it always is, under the surface.

He reaches out, draws Harry close. Surrenders to the warm embrace, to the gentle press of Harry's lips on his forehead, to Harry's hands on him. The room spins, dizzy with drunkenness and exhaustion: physical, emotional, magical.

It's only sensible _not_ to let go of Harry.

It's anything but sensible to bury his face in Harry's feathery, soft hair. It's anything but wise to stay like this, holding onto him. It's anything but proper to draw Harry down onto the bed with him.

_Where else would he sleep? Surely not the couch. I don't have the focus to unweave the spells limiting Harry's abilities right now, and I'm not about to leave him alone and defenseless. Not again._

_No, that's not quite the truth._

_He knows just what I am now. He's seen exactly what I'm capable of. And he's still here. With me. And I need that. I need him. So much I'm being unwise._

Harry's ring in his pocket presses against his thigh. He struggles to shed his jacket, so clumsily that Harry has to help him out of it.

_He deserves the chance to see the whole truth. Something besides the very worst that I can do._

The world can wait.

Harry reaches out to turn off the bedside light and plunges the room into darkness. Some things are easier in the dark. Snape slides his arms around the young man, and breathes, "Stay."

A whisper of happy, content laughter is all the answer he needs. "M'not leaving. Sleep."


End file.
